563. CO Alarms

We want to talk about carbon monoxide detectors. If you have any gas appliance at home, any gas blocks, anything burning gas, if it's a water heater or a furnace or a gas bag or a stove, anything that burns gas, you should have a carbon monoxide detector in the house. Now, depending on how big the house is or how split up or how many levels, depends on how many you would need. But carbon monoxide is something that happens anytime you have a fuel burning appliance or a fuel burnt generator, a car, anything that has combustion, you're going to have carbon monoxide as a byproduct of that. So the way it's handled in gas bags and furnaces, that inducer side, you know, gets rid of those, it gets rid of those bad odors or bad gases versus it coming into the living space, it takes it outside where it cannot harm you. But the problem is when it gets into the living space. So if we ever go to a furnace with a cracked heat exchanger, that's something that can let carbon monoxide into the airstream and it's something that can come into the home. Carbon monoxide is. You can't smell it, sodulous, you can't sense it. Usually when people get into trouble is at nighttime when they're sleeping, because it can. Carbon monoxide can cause weakness, confusion, headaches, dizziness, nausea. But when you're sleeping, obviously you're not going to have those effects that you would have if you were awake. So the challenge is when you're sleeping, how do you know you have a problem? Well, the carbon monoxide detector should be placed at receptacle, ground level, at the receptacle, on the ground, not high up, but on the ground at the receptacle. Because there's different reports on the makeup of carbon dioxide. Some say it's heavy, some say it's light. But either way it's going to start low and go high. Like everything else is going to be a stack effect. Air is going to go up. So you want it to sense as soon as possible, if you get it measured in parts per million. So as soon as, as soon as you have an issue where it's too much carbon monoxide and that thing goes off, you want to alarm. The reason I would never recommend it to be that high is carbon monoxide slash, smoke detector. The reason I would never, you know, want to be the highest, once it gets, you know, that high, where it senses the parts per million, it's, it's already fed me, it's already a bigger problem than it could have been if it was detected down low. When, when we actually install a new system, if it's a gas fire system, if it's gas bag or runners, we have to install a carbon monoxide detector with that install and it has to be low, it has to be around the bedrooms. Again, when you're sleeping at nighttime, you know these effects carbon monoxide has on you. You can't really sense it because you're asleep. So you want the alarm to be something that wakes you up, you can hear it, there is a problem and we need to see if it's a valid problem or if it's not a valid problem. So it's important to have carbon monoxide detectors at ground level, at receptacle level, but it's also important to have it in the sleeping areas as well. So you know, if you have a one story house and you have bedrooms on one side and bedrooms on the other side, you know, I'll put one on this corridor and put one over here. That way if you know these people are sleeping in the bedroom and these people are gone, you still have an alarm going off where it wakes up the folks on this side of the house and it says, hey, we got a problem and you're weak to it and you're not, you're not having an issue. But anytime you have a gas appliance, you should have a carbon monoxide alarm, a carbon monoxide dictator. And if you have a multi story house, just like a smoke alarm, it should be on every level of the home. It's just for your protection. Again, it's odorless, you can't smell it, you can't fill it. There are some symptoms like weakness, confusion, chest pain, headaches, dizziness, nausea, all of that could be caused by carbon monoxide. But again, it's a real problem when you're asleep because you can't feel these effects. So I would put one around every bedroom, in every level of the home. Like I said, if we replace the system, we have to install a carbon dioxide or make sure one is installed in the home. We see a lot of the combination fire and smoke alarm, carbon, you know, fire, fire, smoke, carbon co alarms and they're high up. Again, you want it to be at ground level, at the receptacle level because you want that alarm to go off as soon as there's a problem. And it's going to detect it lower first, then higher. It's not like smoke, it's going to detect the first lower rather than higher. So you want that Detection as soon as possible, every little bit long, make sure you have one. But it's something that's as critical, especially as we get into the cold weather, the cold season. I mean, even your car omits, you know, carbon monoxide. And either way it is dangerous. But you definitely don't want the gas funds in the house and you not to have, you know, gas when it gets really cold is, is one of the more efficient ways to go as far as energy bills and as far as you can be efficient. On the newer gas furnaces, you know, all the way up to, I think they have one now, it's like 98% efficient, which is crazy. It means, it means for every dollar you spend on heating, you actually get 98 cent of heat out of that dollar versus old school. The older systems or older furnaces were 60, 70, 80 deficient, meaning for every dollar, get 80 cent back in actual heat. So it's a good way to heat. You just need protection because CO at the wrong levels is the problem. And all these alarms, you know, I think they start out about 50 or 70 parts per million start alarming and start alerting you to the fact that we have an issue, we have a problem. When the hardest things, especially when it's really cold, is, you know, going through a furnace and having a cracked heat exchanger and, you know, telling the folks that we have to turn off their heat for safety. It could be really cold and can be really heartbreaking, but it's something that protects you and your family. I don't want you to wake up dead. So, you know, we're going to take your safety first. So if it's cracked, if there's CO coming into the house, if there's even possibility of CO coming into the house, you want that CO alarm to go off because that's something you don't, you don't want to take a chance on. You don't want to risk being warm tonight for what could be a lifetime of problems. Those are CO detectors, something very important, very key this time of year. Going to the cold weather, you're going to start burning gas more and more. So make sure you have the CO detector in the right place. So with that, I will take any questions you have.