CARBON MONOXIDE.

I didn't know,till today that Carbon Monoxide Detectors have a life span..
At 7am this morning the Fire Brigade had been called out by my neighbour.
Her Detector Alarm Had gone off,so she called the Fire Brigade,she was told her Detector was past it's use date.
I was talking to one of the Brigade and he informed me the life span was@4yrs.
My own Detector has went off a few times and i have just changed the batteries.My Detector is @7yrs old, (me thinks Tomorrow new Detector).

 

I didn't know that. Its useful to know, thanks for sharing.

While we're on the subject, it worries me how many people don't know that they are supposed to be positioned close to the floor. Many people put them on shelves or the mantelpiece, clearly oblivious to the fact that as carbon monoxide is heavier than air, it fills the room from bottom up, so if the detector is higher than your head would be if you were chilling on the sofa, then the detector is worse than useless. (Useless because it wont go off until you're head is already in the carbon monoxide, worse than useless because it lulls people into a false sense of security).

 

Cheers for the heads up

Nearly died as a child from CO, parafin heater started burning wrong, just felt myself going under the bath water & got out, spent the rest of the evening chucking up.

 

it amazes me too that people know that if they have gas they should have it serviced and have a car mon detector but many people are ignorant to the fact that coal fires are just as deadly and should take the same precautions

 

Sorry to tell you clueless but you are mistaken
Carbon monoxide is approximately the same density as air, so you should NOT put a carbon monoxide detector low down.
You are getting confused (as alot of people do) with carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is heavier than air and will also displace it. Another one that gets people is the "symbols" for carbon monoxide.

CO is carbon monoxide.

CO2 is carbon dioxide.

I quite often see written down CO2 detector instead of CO detector.

I also suggest that what a fire brigade person tells you in regard to lifespan of a product, you take with a pinch of salt, seriously, allow me.

The first carbon monoxide detectors had a working life of less than 24 months, it has steadily increased, but its generally accepted that detectors have a "life span" of 10 years, BUT it depends on what the make is, so to say they have a life of 4 years is not right since most can exceed this with no problem.

Also if you ask a fire brigade person what the flow rate and pressure of a fire hose is, chances are the answer will be "I don't know" The reason they don't know is because they have no need to know, similarly you can't expect then to know how long each brand of detector should last.

 

True. I suspect that it's not so much ignorance in the case of coal fire owners, just kind of times sneaking up on them. You take an old house with a coal fire. No danger of carbon monoxide poisoning because with ventilation bricks just under the floorboards, old fashioned wooden windows that seem to amplify a mild breeze outside into a tornado inside, no draft excluders apart from a hand knitted stuffed snake etc, there was no chance of poisoning because the house wasn't so much well ventilated, as just the outside surrounded by a few almost pointless walls.

Then time passes, and upvc doors and windows replace the old wooden ones, every form of insulation is added, the whole becomes almost unrecognisably different as it goes from being an old house, to a modernised house. Only one feature remains, the open fire. Only now, instead of its carbon monoxide escaping under the doors, between the floor boards, through the ventilation brick, or being blown away by the hurricane coming through the tiny gap in the window frame, instead that gas is contained.

 

Nope. I know the difference between carbon monoxide and CO2

I'll concede that I may have been wrong about the relative weight of CO and air though. Its what I was taught at school and then college, but not to any high standard, and of course things are often over simplified at that level.

 

sorry i would disagree with the first part there clueless i know this information first hand so to speak growing up my father was often called out to house to do inspections and tests in houses ( often while the deceased where still present) and this is going back over 30 years ago and were often very old houses but still cause of death was car mon pois, in some cases people would fill the vents with papers and glue to cut out the draughts, My father would get very distressed by this and every year he would post notices to home owners via the coal merchants and log man warning of the dangers

 

Now I'm confused. I concede that I might have been wrong about CO being heavier than air, but I didn't have it down as lighter than air, and when the gas inspector has been round to do his annual appliance checks, I've never seen him testing near the ceilings.

I think the only thing I'm now clear about is that I know less about this than I thought I did, so I'm going to bow out of this one for now, until the inevitable change of topic

 

hey clueless if nothing else an one who now reads this thread will see it is as clear as mud and tomorrow hopefully they will go and buy one ( if the havent already) or they will check the intructions on the ones they have got either way hopefully we all will have learned something
in the mean time fancy a while we wait for the thread to derail

 

Carbon monoxide is about the same density as air, its deffinantly not heavier or that much lighter, BUT, just like air, if its warm it becomes less dense than air so it rises.

 

My most treasured metal tankard is full, as it usually would be at this time on a friday night. Additionally, purely for medicinal reasons as I have a sore throat and ear ache, I also have a chaser of finest cheap brandy

 

i cant drink so have one for me lol