Carbon Monoxide Detector

At about 2:30 a.m. the carbon monoxide detector went off. That got my attention. Everyone got up and moving. I opened up the windows and doors and we went outside. After a fan ran a while I went back to check up on things. 

The thing about carbon monoxide is that you can’t smell it or see it. Your body absorbs it better than oxygen. It makes you stupid, sleepy and then kills you. 

So how do you check to see if the problem is the detector itself? The smart thing is to call the fire department and have them check with their equipment. However, I’m not even sure if my tiny volunteer department even has the equipment. What I did was to bring in my second detector in from the mud room and see how that reacted. That one didn’t register any problems. 

I went through the whole house and even checked outside to see if there was something amiss. There were no issues. 

When I pulled the back off the detector that went off there was a whole bunch of fine print behind the mounting plate. It turns out the detector could fail in a high humidity condition. We’d had high humidity in the house for days. The detector was then shut down and thrown away.

The next time I’m in town I’m going to have to pick up another backup detector, or two. 

-Sixbears