CO Death Following Ice Storm

nick_7

Makes you want to go all electric for heat and hot water.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Man was running a gasoline generator in his garage.

Here's some more local pics:

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Now there's a special weather advisory for high winds with ice still on the trees..."significant event"

Mark Hunt_5

Never fails

My Google news alert gets VERY busy when there is a big power outage some where.

We're getting ice now. Not like that though.

People need to be reminded constantly NOT to run gas powered generators in doors and an attached garage is part of the house.

They should also be far enough away from the house to prevent CO from getting back in.

Mark H

Home Depot Employee

As a former Vol Fire Dept Chief, we continued to see this misuse of generators on a regular basis.

Every time we left the incident (many turned out for the worse) we always left with the same question in our minds:

Did these people live in a vacuum and never read a newspaper, watched the TV news or can read and comprehend what is on the generator or in the owners manual???

Weezbo

not a good thing...:(

one thing about any temporary solution....it can have very permanent results. Driving in that stuff is like Russian Roulette at every turn.

when this happens here , the trees snap and break off everywhere and anywhere it is not something that is in the realm of predictable ,..it really is super dangerous for the Electrical crews at that time they really could not price the work that is done. it certainly on a par with Fire and rescue crews. that these Workers can get it done is nothing short of a small miracle. to prove the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and functional there are some people who lash a gen set to the back of the truck and run a bunch of extension type cords out to a few homes in remote cul d sacs during the outage.

Joannie_15

Sure they did

They read the newspapers, watched the news and saw all the warnings....but a very powerful phrase kept running through their heads: "That won't happen to me."

jp_2

Mmmmmmmmmmmm

I smell fire wood!!!!!!

got no choice but to look on the bright side. love my battery and PV panels.

Unknown

Was rampent up-here too,

during I/S 98,, people running generators in their basements to keep the sump pumps going and the furnace on.
Most were afraid to put them outside as thieves were ripping them off.
Even remember witnessing some fistfights in the bread isle when a few stores did open! Batteries also became a non-existent free for all to be fought over.


Dave

Unknown

Yup,

We (me and my brother) had a hangar for a while where we slept on occasion. We made bedrooms out of the existing offices. It had a full bath and a kitchen. This would have been in thw wilder days. Were were using a generator one night because the power was out. We had it about 10 feet OUTSIDE with the bay door open. Apparently the wind carried the CO in through the bay door. We all woke up the next morning with the worst headaches we'd ever had. We were lucky we woke up at all.

Mark Hunt_5

Glad you are here

and you are 100% correct. It is lucky that any of you woke up at all.

A few years back I received a news story from Washington state. Big snow storm blocked roads and knocked out power.

A young man was concerned for the well being of his aunt and uncle that lived off the beaten path. Phone calls went un-answered so when he was able, he drove out to check on them. He had to walk the last half mile or so because the road was still snowed in. He found them both, dead.

A generator that had long since run out of gas was in the attached garage and a lead cord was run in to the house so that the door to the garage was left open just a bit for the power cable.

That is all it took.

Ever hear about the cab driver on Long Island? He went home for lunch, he lived in a condo, and pulled the cab into his garage. He left the door open but he also left his cab running because it was so cold. He finished his lunch and went back to work.

The couple that lived above him never woke up again.

A few years ago in Albany NY. Man shows up at the Albany Medical Center complaining of dizziness and nausea. They run a few tests and determine that he has CO poisoning. The doctors ask him where he was. He tells them the name of the HOTEL he was staying at. The ER at AMC calls the hotel and tells them to evacuate the building. A vent pipe
"fell apart" causing the products of combustion to vent into the hotel. The guy felt sick, drove around and found the hospital. Everyone on his floor was dosed.

I have accumulated many news articles over the past years.

Jim Davis, George Kerr and I were asked to do a couple CO seminars at ISH in Chicago. John Hall from The News put this together and he also moderated. I think we had 7 attendees in the morning and one in the afternoon. The ONE that showed in the afternoon walked in by mistake.

I had a better turn out when Scott Milne asked me to speak to his PHCC group in Massachusetts.

I know as a fact that Jim Davis and Tim McElwain have open seats in their classes. Why?

CO is the number one cause of accidental poisoning deaths in north America. Number one.

You set something on fire in a persons house, and that is what we do as plumbing/heating contractors, you should know whether it is a safe fire or not.

You can't tell that by color of the flame either. CO comes in all colors yet it remains colorless.

Only way to be sure is to test with the right equipment. Take the time to learn how to test and how to fix an issue if you should find one. You can charge for this too. Your competition probably doesn't do it so you will be ahead of them in that area. Do you really think that your customers won't appreciate that you are looking over them even when you are not there?

Mark H

Home Depot Employee

Chief here

I also responded to a home with sick children.

Found two fireplaces (burning wood), the house was closed up and tight. Turns out the lower level one was smoldering and the upper level unit was burning well and had pulled the home into negative pressure, poisoning the occupants

Also remember another call, one kid was able to awake and go to neighbors. The smoldering fireplace sucked the house down into negative and caused the atmospheric water heater and furnace to spill its vent products.

Both families lived and spent the day in oxygen tents.

Happens with wood too!

Mark Hunt_5

JP knows

but I am glad you pointed these things out.

Imagine the surprise this customer got.

Remodeled his kitchen to the tune of about 70k. He likes to cook so he had a commercial sized gas stove installed complete with the 1000cfm exhaust hood.

Guess where that 1000cfm exhaust was being replaced from...yep! The chimney! Nature hates a vacuum so that chimney became a straw. All of his atmospheric appliances vented into the house when he made eggs or boiled water for tea.

Your fireplace scenario reminds of a similar situation. One of my buddies had a girl friend that had a new home built. She likes wood fires, so do I, so she has this ULTIMATE fireplace/chimney system built by a "fireplace expert". He does awesome work! 5 individual flues and "make up air" vents for the master fireplace. They start a fire. Smoke alarms in the basement go off. Hmmmmm???? My buddy goes outside and WATCHES smoke from the main fireplace getting sucked back down the flue of the un-used wood stove in the basement.

Negative pressure EVEN WITH "make up air" vents for the main FP.

Negative pressure. Leaky return ducting in your basement coupled with a clothes dryer perhaps? Both exhausting air from the house. That air HAS to be replaced. What is the easiest path? Usually, it is the chimney. Biggest, unobstructed hole in the structure. A straw.

Excellent post HDE.

Mark H

Home Depot Employee

Thanks, but I still tear up thinking about the ones that didn't make it.

One comes to mind was a little girl whose single mom was friends with my wife and lived 3 blocks away. While I had been in the house at summer time never during heating season.

Got the 911 call at 8:00 AM, she had stayed home from school for 2 days because she felt ill from the "flu".

Defective/old furnace, I was first on scene, she was gone.

Mark Hunt_5

You know it better than anyone


How senseless it is. Yet there is no code or industry standard to guard against this.

I was a contractor for 27 years. I installed and serviced so many systems. Until I attended a course by Jim Davis, I thought I knew it all. Well I didn't. (I still don't know everything)

I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to find a child that has died.

But every year many are taken by CO. You know this. What we never hear about are the ones that did not die. We never hear about the ones that made it through the hyperbaric chamber and lived with diminshed capacity. We never hear about the ones that live through the initial poisoning and die a few years later from heart failure DIRECTLY attributable to the CO poisoning they got four or five years earlier.

Thanks HDE (wish I knew your first name at least) for your service in the VFD.

You make a difference.

Mark H

jp_2

home depot

Good info, make up air ain't just for boilers

i have good infiltration, last 55 mph snow storm sent light snow into the cabin, just like in the harry potter movie where it snowed inside their dining hall. couldn't tell where it came from, just seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Larry Savino

Just reading this thread about another death, So the first thing I think is "what were they thinking" Then as I read a little more up comes the subject of negitive pressures in a home. Well the question is who should be responcible for it, I mean what trade should be the one to tell the customer he has a problem, Should it be the electrician who installed 21 non sealed high hats in the secound floor of a 2 story home and has the house stacking like crazy and get all of the replacement air from any chimney it can. Is it the guy who installed a whole house fan and has the louvers installed incorrectly and also leaking air out of the home. The furnance guy who installed a new furnace and didnt seal his return up. the kitchen guy with the new super duper exchaust fan, the fireplace guy who installs a new fireplace in an allready negitive home?

I see more and more homes in a negitive pressure and feel I am the only one showing this problems to customers and explaining there dangers.

eather more people in the trades have better get a better understanding of how a house should work as a system or every home built or remodled needs a barometric damper to remedy the problems or at least to offset the lack of knowledge in our trades of what causes these negitive pressures.

Just left a home with a drafting problem on a wood burning stove we installed last year and now it doesnt work. So I ask what has changed in the home recently , Customer states the just installed a High eff boiler and hot water heater. Go into the boiler room with a louvered door and find a new Dunkirk condencing boiler with a indirect hot water heater and the origial 8"b vent flue system not being used ,still open to the roof vent. Took a match to it and the draft was soo strong it almost pulled the match out. I asked why it was still open and the installed told them its good for combustion air or a future wire chase. The installers should have capped the orphaned chimney so not to suck all of the air(heat) out of the house I mean come on this is not brain surgery ,but unfortunatley only concern was to put in the boiler he was sent to do.

Me and the customer stuck a towel in the unused boiler flue and was able to eliminate the back draft on the stove imediately.

2 days later I get a call from the contractor who installed the boiler telling me its a small county and I should not be throwing stones at his company and that I should also get an education in condencing boilers as they use out door air for combustion so they cant cause negitive pressure in a home. I then explained to him the negitive pressure was cause by the flue system he did not seal off he still did not get it.He would not return to the home and I ended up installing a cap on the flue in the basement as a customer curtisy,

Sorry to ramble but all though every trade can cause a negive pressure in a home it seams no one steps up to offers soultions