In this HVAC safety briefing, Derek Cole explains why every home with a gas‑burning appliance—such as furnaces, water heaters, stoves, or generators—must have a carbon monoxide (CO) detector. He describes how CO is produced by combustion and can enter living spaces, especially when a heat exchanger cracks. Because CO is odorless and can cause weakness, confusion, headaches, dizziness, and nausea, it is especially dangerous during sleep. Cole advises that detectors be installed at ground‑level receptacles, near bedrooms, and on every level of the house, mirroring smoke‑alarm placement. He notes that CO alarms typically trigger at 50–70 ppm, and placing them low ensures earlier detection than high‑mounted units. He also discusses the high efficiency of modern gas furnaces (up to 98 % efficient) and the importance of turning off heating if a CO leak is suspected, even in cold weather, to protect occupants. The talk concludes with an invitation for questions.
Chapters
We want to talk about carbon monoxide detectors. If you have any gas appliance at home, any gas appliance, anything burning gas, if it's a water heater or a furnace or a gas pack 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 it's 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— fuel-burn 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 packs 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 something that can come into the home. Carbon monoxide is— you can't smell it, it's odorless. 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 gonna 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 monoxide. 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. There's 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 that carbon monoxide slash smoke detector. The reason I would never, you know, want to be that high is once it gets, you know, that high where it senses the parts per million, it's already affecting me. It's already a bigger problem than it could have been if it was detected down low. When we actually install a new system, if it's a gas-fired system that it's gas pack or furnace, 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, you know, 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, you know, bedrooms on one side and bedrooms on the other side, You know, I would 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 awake to it and you're not having an issue. Anytime you have a gas appliance, you should have a carbon monoxide alarm, a carbon monoxide detector. And if you have a multi-story house, just like a smoke alarm, it should be on every level of the home. Um, it's just for your protection. Again, it's odorless, you can't smell it, you can't feel it. There are some Symptoms like, you know, weakness, confusion, chest pain, headaches, dizziness, nausea— all 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'll 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 monoxide detector or make sure one is installed in the home. We see a lot of the combination fire and smoke alarm, carbon, you know, fire smoke carbon CO alarms, and they're high up. Again, you want this 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 than higher. It's not like smoke, uh, it's going to detect it first lower rather than higher. So you want that detection as soon as possible. Every little bit alone, uh, make sure you have one, but it's something that's critical, especially if you get into, um, the cold weather, the cold season, uh, I mean, even your car emits carbon monoxide. Either way, it's dangerous, but you definitely don't want the gas lines in the house and not to have one. Gas, when it gets really cold, 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, uh, you actually get 98 cents of heat out of that dollar, uh, versus old school, uh, the older systems or older furnaces were 60, 70, 80% efficient. Meaning for every dollar you get 80 cents back in actual heat. So it's a good way to heat, you just need protection because CO at the wrong levels is a problem. And all these alarms, you know, I think they start about 50 or 70 parts per million, start alarming and start alerting you to the fact that we hit we have an issue, we have a problem. One of the hardest things, especially when it's really cold, is going through a furnace and having a cracked heat exchanger and telling the folks that we have to turn off their heat for safety. It could be really cold and it 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 gonna 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. So those are CO detectors, something very important, very key this time of year, especially going into 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.
