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Rudely awoken- Carbon monoxide alarm


rusty69

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4 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

A shovel of ash from the ash pan on top of the coals will slow a runaway stove and bring it back under control. if not put it completely out.

Useful advice as always, Mike, but no use if you are off the boat at the time. I'm not seriously afraid of that scenario, but presumably you'd agree that if the door seal is looking ropey (ho), best thing is to replace it, not exactly a major job...

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6 hours ago, LadyG said:

Years ago I had to call 999 when a house chimney fire took off, I say house, it was The Manor House, and fireman said I could have put soil on the fireplace ........... so, I  think a bucket of damp sand would do the job. (snip)

The cure of choice used to be wet newspaper. The "steam" would cool the chimney, as well as cutting down the air supply. Worked best if it wasn't overdone, putting the wanted fire out prematurely while leaving the unwanted one going merrily ...

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7 minutes ago, Iain_S said:

The cure of choice used to be wet newspaper. The "steam" would cool the chimney, as well as cutting down the air supply. Worked best if it wasn't overdone, putting the wanted fire out prematurely while leaving the unwanted one going merrily ...

In the FS we usually used chimney rods, a bucket of water and a stirrup pump, if that failed it was a hosereel squirted, carefully! down the chimney pot. 

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3 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I bet that made a SPECTACULAR mess in the room with the frieplace!

Not at all, someone by the fireplace warning when water started to appear then the squirter would wait for water to evaporate then start again.

We always left the premises in the condition we found it, sometimes tidier! 

 

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Ours went of at the weekend, having lit a small fire to blow down and winterise the boiler I then put the funnel cap on and left to go home. However I forgot something and had to come back ten minutes later.

Obviously I would never cap it off with people on board till it was right out, but it did test that it works.

 

Daniel 

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  • 5 weeks later...
54 minutes ago, Irob said:

Is stove leakage an item for my next springs safety certificate check ?   I,ve not needed one since i bought the boat in 2014 .  I understand the inspector does an lpg gas check.

Assuming your boat is a private boat, this is the checklist the BSS examiner will use -

https://www.boatsafetyscheme.org/media/268789/ecp-private-boats-ed3_rev2_apr2015_public_final.pdf

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Another reason CO alarms go off at 3 am is when a cell in a battery has failed /boiled dry- it's able to detect the sulphur smell that WE ignored, thinking it was blowing back in from the toilet vent near the bedroom porthole....

 

 

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Last summer i left the boat for a week away. My neighbour phoned to say the co alarm was shrieking away in the bedroom he could hear it through the open pidgeon box vent. Kept the neigbours awake. He could detect no smoke or smell. The boat was locked no way to access. The shrieking stopped after 3 days. I was not popular. When i returned i discovered the alarm was the 'low battery' warning. After 3 days the battery was well and truly dead. I should have got another six months battery power without the 'low battery' alarm !

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4 minutes ago, Irob said:

Last summer i left the boat for a week away. My neighbour phoned to say the co alarm was shrieking away in the bedroom he could hear it through the open pidgeon box vent. Kept the neigbours awake. He could detect no smoke or smell. The boat was locked no way to access. The shrieking stopped after 3 days. I was not popular. When i returned i discovered the alarm was the 'low battery' warning. After 3 days the battery was well and truly dead. I should have got another six months battery power without the 'low battery' alarm !

We had a similar embarrassment. I now always remove the smoke alarm from its holder (which turns it off) and push the pins back into the CO alarm (which turns it off) whenever we leave the boat in the marina for any significant length of time.

Edited by nicknorman
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Unfortunately some of the "7 year" or "10 year" alarms have no way of temporarily de-activating them once first put into use, so there is little choice but to leave active alarms on the boat.

I suspect many of us have had to do a long drive to a boat when we least needed for no other purpose than dealing with an expired alarm.

(Actually I suppose you could bring such alarms home with you, but I be I'd forget to return them to the boats next time I was there!).

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2 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Unfortunately some of the "7 year" or "10 year" alarms have no way of temporarily de-activating them once first put into use, so there is little choice but to leave active alarms on the boat.

I suspect many of us have had to do a long drive to a boat when we least needed for no other purpose than dealing with an expired alarm.

(Actually I suppose you could bring such alarms home with you, but I be I'd forget to return them to the boats next time I was there!).

Both our alarms are long life ones. I didn't specifically get them because they could be switched off, but glad they can! Surely most of these alarms are not powered when you get them, and require some action such as pulling a pin out, in order to activate them? Therefore there's a fair chance that the action can be reveresed to turn them off.

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8 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

Both our alarms are long life ones. I didn't specifically get them because they could be switched off, but glad they can! Surely most of these alarms are not powered when you get them, and require some action such as pulling a pin out, in order to activate them? Therefore there's a fair chance that the action can be reveresed to turn them off.

Without having one in front of me, I can't recall why I thought two of the alarms we have can not be disabled.

I have memories of needing to pull out a bit of protruding insulating plastic to establish the initial connection, but in part of it where it would not be possible to put that back.

I could be wrong though - I'll try to remember to look again when next there.

I'm familiar with alarms where you pull out a pin that can be put back in, but there don't have that, I know.

Interesting question:  If it is an alarm that self expires after "n" years, are those "n" years actually counting down if it's disabled - I assume they are not?

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10 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

Without having one in front of me, I can't recall why I thought two of the alarms we have can not be disabled.

I have memories of needing to pull out a bit of protruding insulating plastic to establish the initial connection, but in part of it where it would not be possible to put that back.

I could be wrong though - I'll try to remember to look again when next there.

I'm familiar with alarms where you pull out a pin that can be put back in, but there don't have that, I know.

Interesting question:  If it is an alarm that self expires after "n" years, are those "n" years actually counting down if it's disabled - I assume they are not?

Partially counting down. Obviously the current drain is removed, but there is still self-discharge that slowly reduces the remaining charge.

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31 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

Partially counting down. Obviously the current drain is removed, but there is still self-discharge that slowly reduces the remaining charge.

The ones I have experienced in the past have not expired because of he rate the battery runs down.

For one, I was able to prove that at exactly 7 years to the day after I first activated it it declared it was too old for further use, (yes I had actually for once filled out the sticky with the activation date on it).

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8 hours ago, Irob said:

My neighbour phoned to say the co alarm was shrieking away in the bedroom he could hear it through the open pidgeon box vent. Kept the neigbours awake. He could detect no smoke or smell. 

Carbon monoxide is invisible and has no odour. So your neighbour would naturally not detect anything.

Best not to  disable the co alarm while you are away as has been discussed on this thread.  You might enter a boat full of CO and then flake out and never wake up. Or even worse be rescued and wake  up and be brain damaged .

 

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21 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Carbon monoxide is invisible and has no odour. So your neighbour would naturally not detect anything.

Best not to  disable the co alarm while you are away as has been discussed on this thread.  You might enter a boat full of CO and then flake out and never wake up. Or even worse be rescued and wake  up and be brain damaged .

 

But where is this CO to magically appear from? If you leave a boat with something on/running/burning that could produce CO then fair enough. But that is hardly likely when one is away for weeks as we are. Do you leave a CO alarm on inside your car when it’s parked, just in case it is suddenly filled with CO. I rather doubt it!

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10 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

But where is this CO to magically appear from? If you leave a boat with something on/running/burning that could produce CO then fair enough. But that is hardly likely when one is away for weeks as we are. Do you leave a CO alarm on inside your car when it’s parked, just in case it is suddenly filled with CO. I rather doubt it!

I do not have  a gas alarm in the car.  The potential sources of gas are not inside the car passenger bay.

Poisonous gas may be produced by a battery , especially if a battery charger is left on and a battery is defective. Or a solid fuel stove may produce carbon monoxide even if extinguished. Unlike a car a boat is well engineered to retain gas .

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14 minutes ago, MartynG said:

I do not have  a gas alarm in the car.  The potential sources of gas are not inside the car passenger bay.

Poisonous gas may be produced by a battery , especially if a battery charger is left on and a battery is defective. Or a solid fuel stove may produce carbon monoxide even if extinguished. Unlike a car a boat is well engineered to retain gas .

Poisonous gas produced by a battery stinks. Anyway, if we are at home 450 miles away, it will not be very nice for our neighbours to have to listen to the alarm for a few weeks until we return. Yes a solid fuel stove could produce CO for a short while after it seems to be extinguished, but no more than a day or so. We are away for weeks. A boat is well engineered to retain gas (lpg) but not CO which is light and will disperse reasonably quickly through the fixed ventilation once the source stops emitting.

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