CO problems continue...

GW

wow, what a field day for the ambulance chaser. The hotel will get wacked pretty hard, and rightly so.

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Steverino

CO problems continue...

in yesterdays paper: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701020354
I would guess that the hotel knew about their CO problem, yet did nothing about it?

Steamhead (in transit)

Ocean City all over again

who dropped the ball this time?

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Mark Hunt

It is a good idea


to bring a good CO alarm with you when you travel.

Do not trust that the place you are staying has such alarms, most do not.

The story says that the "boiler room" created high levels of CO. How does a "room" do that? It doesn't. The boiler was not venting correctly and once the burn went bad, the CO levels would have gone through the roof.

CO poisonings in hotels happens more often than you may think..

Be careful.

Mark H

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Steverino

More readings...

Steverino

More readings...

I "googled" it: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=KEY+WEST,+FL+CARBON+MONOXIDE+DOUBLETREE+RESORT

[Deleted User]

I'd LOVE to see some statistics...

regarding the type of appliance installed where CO poisoning has occurred. I'm laying a guess out that 99% of in house carbon monoxide poisoning cases in the US are associated with atmospherically fired appliances. Anyone care to take me up on this bet?

Now, if this had been a sealed combustion unit, even an 86%er, I seriously doubt that we'd be having this conversation.

Not to say that even sealed combustion units can't kill, but I think the chances are a LOT less than those associated with an atmospheric appliance.

Having actually been in a room with a perfectly good appliance that went south in a heart beat, I can tell you that the situations that generate CO can flip flop so quickly that it would make your head swim. Let's look at a typical scenario.

Boiler sitting in a cold room gets a call for heat. Burner (atmospherically vented appliance) fires, can't overcome cold air slug in tall stack, starts spilling byproducts of combustion into room. Initially, CO is not that drastic, however, as the air becomes more filled with products of combustion (CO2) flame process becomes more fouled, raising room CO conditions DRASTICLY in a short period of time. If the gas train ignition controls are stock feature CSD-1 controls, and the room fills with so much CO2 that the pilot and main flame snuff out, the control is SUPPOSED to go into an immediate lock out position. If the hotel maintenance crew replaced this control with a non lockout control, appliance keeps going back for trial for ignition, and as the oxygen levels in the room increase, the process starts all over again. In the best case scenario, the appliance eventually establishes and maintains an upward draft condition in the vent stack, and everything returns to normal before anyone gets sick or worse.

In a worse case scenario, due to what ever reason (read tall building stack effect, mechanically induced negative pressure, blocked vent etc...), the appliance continues to spill just enough products of combustion to foul its own combustion process, but not enough to snuff the flame thereby producing significant amounts of CO, which are being spilled into the inside environment.

The CO is being pulled to all the points of negative pressure, which can be multiple sources, including a thru the wall room air conditioner. The unsuspecting occupants lay down to calm down their jet lag, and never wake up...

The negative pressure is eliminated, due to what ever reason (chef shuts off kitchen exhaust hood, guests turn of air conditioner) and appliance re-establishes draft and CO condition self corrects. Next morning, young guest doesn't show up for breakfast and is found in room dead from CO poisoning, with lots of other guests complaining of partial poisoning. Fire department shows up, can't find anything wrong, and writes it off to "defective appliance". I don't envy these people (first responders) in their investigations, because there are SO many different scenarios that can cause these conditions, that you would literally "have to be there" in order to see them happen.

But, had the appliances been sealed combustion, as I said before, I don't think we'd be having this conversation...

Maybe, instead of trying to get congress to leglislate CO detectors, we need to outlaw atmospherically vented appliances... The benefits would be significantly decreased energy consumption, AND a significant decrease in CO poisoning cases from gas fired appliances.

A quick googling of Carbon + Monoxide + Germany didn't produce many hits, and most were related to medical CO cases due to CO2 scrubbers used during surgery. Granted, they test their appliances annualy, but there is an obvious trend there...

One of them things that makes you go HMMMMmmmm.

ME