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#76
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I ask out of ignorance PS
"Char Jackson" wrote in message
... Back in the 90's, a friend of mine was feeling sick in the evenings when she was home and fine during the day when she was at work. Likewise for her son - sick in the evenings and fine at school. After a few days of that, her furnace failed and she brought in a repairman. He discovered that the flue was plugged by a squirrel nest and the furnace exhaust had been venting into the basement. She and her son were lucky they were able to wake up each morning while that was going on. Neither of them smelled anything unusual. If she'd had a CO detector, I'm sure it would have gone nuts. My parents have a holiday cottage which has a coal- and wood-burning stove. Some friends were staying there and started to feel dizzy and sick one night. Luckily one of them recognised the symptoms - and the flushed red face of one of the other friends - and got them outside into the fresh air. The fire brigade came and detected high levels of CO. It gave my dad a real fright to think that his stove could have been responsibility for the deaths of three friends. I'm not sure whether a fault was found with the stove or the flue. The stove has since been changed, though I think because other parts had started to fail, not primarily because of the CO incident. We now have CO detectors in various rooms - not only the room where the stove is, but also adjacent rooms and the one above it, because I think CO is roughly the same density as air so it will rise in the same way as hot air rises, if any *does* escape. CO levels vary between zero (below detectable level) and about 20 ppm. The literature with one sensor says that 40 ppm is the safe maximum for continuous exposure. The sensor only seems to register non-zero levels for a while after the ash pan is removed in the morning to empty it - I imagine the ash gives off a certain amount which goes into the room as the ash pan is being taken outside instead of going up the chimney. The bigger problem with the ash is acrid, sulphurous (*) fumes which tend to be noticeable if the ash bucket has to be kept inside (in a room that is not normally used) to avoid the bucket getting rained on; when there's no rain the bucket lives outside until the ash has cooled enough to put into a plastic coal bag to go in the bin. (*) I wonder if it's sulphuric acid amongst other things. It's an SO2 rather H2S smell - acrid rather than rotten eggs. I presume coal briquettes ("Phurnacite") still contain a fair amount of sulphur, even though a lot of the tar of normal coal has been removed by part roasting. |
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