Well, This Kinda Got Me Thinking.

ranworthbreeze · February 24, 2017

Better a false alarm than no alarm at all.

MauriceMynah · February 24, 2017

Once again I keep coming back to my point, especially after Alan's comment.

52 minutes ago, ranworthbreeze said:

Better a false alarm than no alarm at all.

If a smoke alarm goes off it wakes you up to a visible problem... Smoke ! Because you can see it, you can identify the source and react accordingly. Not the case with Co. The alarm goes off. If there's no obvious source you ventilate the boat and ensure everybody is on the bank and feeling well. BUT THEN WHAT ?????. It's 3am, raining just a bit and you are standing on the bank at Salhouse Broad. The alarm is silent now. What do you do next?

grendel · February 24, 2017

5 hours ago, tjg1677 said:

Best type to fit are the ones which give a digital readout indicating CO content in the air as ppm ( parts per million ).

When i owned my narrowboat, I was chairman of the club I belonged to, we had caretakers living in a flat above the clubhouse, which was heated by a solid fuel boiler. A CO alarm was fitted in the cellar where the boiler was situated and another in the flat. The alarms used to sound if the wind was in a certain direction and to investigate this further I had extra alarms fitted with a digital readout. One night i had a phone call from the caretakers that all alarms were sounding and reading high. To cut a long story short it transpired that when the boiler was installed thirty odd years ago, there was no flue liner fitted, the flue pipe from the boiler just being piped to the existing chimney system. In a building that is 200 years old, the brickwork in the chimney breasts had become porous and in certain conditions were leaking CO into the building..

A very sobering thought because as chairman I was legally responsible for the caretakers welfare and it brought it home sharply what the consequences could have been.

Moral of the story, don't dismiss the use of these units, they do save lives!!

Trev

in our first house (grade 2 listed council house) we had this problem and they came and fitted a sausage down the chimney and lined it with cement - we then lit a fire and the floor under the grate exploded (damp in the concrete under the grate)