CO2 alarms
 

Are CO2 alarms necessary?

I think you may mean CO, for carbon monoxide. That is the toxic product of incomplete combustion of any kind of carbon-based fuel. So, if you have any natural gas or propane appliances in your home, for example, it is prudent to have one. We are all electric here, but were not up north, and so had one installed there. They are not expensive: $50 or less.

All of the newer homes, even though they are all electric, have at least one combination CO/smoke detector.

Are they necessary? Well, that is an opinion. I personally feel that for the low cost, etc, and for what they do it is never a bad idea to have one. As a former career firefighter I have seen a few times, even in an all electric home cases where they saved lives.

More then once, an elderly person drove their car into the garage, closed the door and left it running. Another time workers next door were using a gas powered generator and the wind blew toxic amounts of CO into a neighbors home. The ppm was well over 100....a deadly amount.

So basically, in an all electric home you may never need one....but if you are in a position of upgrading the ones you have, the addition of one would not hurt.....especially since they now make combo ones, etc.

Frank D'Angelo, ACI

Funny story - had a CO detector in our motor home mounted near the floor in the bedroom. You get one guess as to what happened on the nights the dog slept with his behind pointed at that detector. Yep - can't tell you how many times we jumped out of bed when that alarm went off with the dog looking around thinking "I didn't do that"!

:1rotfl::1rotfl: