Carbon Monoxide - Don't Loose respect for It

[JoelD]

I've been on generator since saturday 10/29/2011 early evening.

Woken up Sunday 10/30 at 4:00am by the soud of first floor CO detector going off, we sleep on second floor.

I jump up and wake up the boss and mini-boss. They are OK.

I run downstairs, open all windows (30 degrees F out), detector stops sounding after 2-3 minutes.

I go down into basement (same level as garage (garage under colonial)), nothing looks odd with furnace, I go into garage, neither of the two CO detectors are sounding.

I go out to driveway, generator is running.

No phone as power is out and many trees down.

I drive to firestation (2 miles), they send truck with two firemen (one guy one woman).

They walk into garage with detector, it reads high, the go into basement, reads a bit lower, go onto first floor near detector that sounded, bunch lower (but windows had been open).

They go back into garage and their unit sounds.

The generator had been exhausting parallel to the garage door, the CO had traveled along the door and gotten into the garage through the bottom of the garage door which did not seal perfectly with the concrete.

Scary part - Neither of the hardwired CO detectors in garage went off.

Scary part - Garage door was shut.

Scary part - We all know this, litterally no smell, no nothing.

Lessoned learned - Generator must be at least 10 feet from the house, period. Never anywhere near any access point to the house, no matter how small. Crack at bottom of door was less than 1/2 inch and less than 5 feet long.

Lessoned learned - You can not have too many CO detectors.

CO is scary scary stuff.

 

[JHTFarmer]

Thank you for this post. It's a must read for anyone with a generator or anyone with a family member or friend or neighbor who has one. The natural tendency in a cold and wet power failure would be to place the generator within arms reach of the garage door.

Every year I read at least one obituary of someone seemingly educated dying of carbon monoxide from a gen set. Maybe this is how they are killed. Chilling story!

 

[tmajor]

Was the exhaust pointed away from the garage door? And, how far away did you have the gen.?

Edit: I see .. parallel to door.

 

[Kyle241]

I'm glad you and your family are okay. CM is definitely the silent killer.

 

[jonyyuma]

Every power interuption here, You will read of someone whom has the gen-set in the open carport or garage. They usually don't survive the event as they have no CM detectors?

 

[aczlan]

Crazy. Reinforces my thought to have the generator on the side/back of the unattached garage which is 20' away from the house and have a stack on the exhaust to get it up a little

Aaron Z

 

[NorTracNY]

Thanks for posting. Reading about potential problems is why I read this second on a regular basis. I never would have guessed this would have happened. Is the 1st floor even with the garage floor?

 

[Dutch445]

wow,
so the CM went into the garage, which is adjacent to
the basement, under the colonial home.
then, it worked it's way upstairs to the main floor
of the home where detectors caught it, all the while the
garage detectors didn't. wow .

how far can cm migrate in a situation like this?
eventually fill the house, from the outside?
was there any other form of draft being drawn from
the home? (coal/wood stove)

 

[blueriver]

Thankfully you had the detectors ... and more than one. If all of them had failed, well I guess this thread may have not been started.

A good thread and thank you for the heads up!! Glad you and the "Boss Ladies" are well.

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Wow, glad you are OK. Lucky you had a CO alarm that actually worked.

Like they say, it's the silent killer.