CO Alarms

[Jim Stoltz]

I mentioned in an earlier post that the exhaust on my generator smells a little rich and it sets off the CO monitor in my MH. While CO is odorless, running rich means more CO. What's interesting is the conditions under which the alarm goes off. It never goes off while the genny is running. Only a few minutes after I shut it off.

The night before last, in anticipation of yet another snow storm, I started up the Allegro so I could move it to the other side of the driveway. I had parked it pretty tight up against the house for a few days to allow the sun to get to melting the driveway where the Allegro had previously sat. I have the choke wound down too tight so it's running a bit rich. After about 5 minutes I realized that the right side exhaust pipe was blowing pretty much directly into the garage. The whole house stunk like exhaust. Since I needed to move the RV anyway, I took it to the grocery store, then to Burger King (not the drive thru) and then parked it in its usual spot on the other side of the driveway. I went in the house, fed the kids and sat down to watch some TV. It was now about 90 minutes from when I had the thing idling by the garage. Suddenly my upstairs CO monitor went off. My 11-year old daughter freaked out and was sure we were going to die. It has never gone off before. I reset it but it kept sounding so I took the batteries out of it and sat back down. 2 minutes later the downstairs alarm went off. I couldn't get it to stop so I took the batteries out of it. I knew it was the motorhome exhaust, but to be safe I opened up the windows and doors for about 30 minutes (brrrrr!), put the batteries back in the detectors and put them back up. No more alarms after that.

So I guess when a CO monitor goes off you should take it seriously, but in both cases (in the MH and in the house) the source of the CO gas was gone when the alarm sounded. Is this common?

[Rich Thomas]

May have just taken that long to mix in with the hvac and circulate in to the system.Its good that you know they work