Diesel Heater and CO...No Alarm...More

[Rbertalotto]

I received a new Diesel Heater from AMAZON.....I fueled it with K1 Kerosene.....I placed a brand new CO detector 3' from the exhaust.....Ran it for one hour in an enclosed garage......no alarm.
I then took a three week old CO detector from the house and placed it next to the other CO detector and ran it for one hour......No alarm!
Is it possible K1 Kerosene produces near no CO, or not enough to set off these alarms?

Both alarms in test mode are fine......Interesting...

 

[luthj]

These diesel air heaters run with a large excess of air, so they produce zero or almost zero CO (when operating properly). If you were to restrict the intake or exhaust significantly, it could produce CO in higher quantities. Simply block about half the intake for 10 seconds, the alarm should go off pretty quickly.

BTW diesel or kerosene doesn't make a significant difference, except for maybe the 20 seconds during startup.

 

[Toyaddict]

When I did a combustion analysis on my heater the CO was in excess of 1000ppm. I didn't test mine at the highest rate of burn so take this for what its worth, I should do another test at max burn. Still worrying that the output is that high. In my econoline the heater cruises along at a low burn. Makes me leery of leaving a window cracked or fan running for ventilation.

 

[luthj]

Its very easy to put a few extra bends or feet of tubing on one of these heaters, and reduce the air flow by 20-30%, which can be a big deal.

 

[alia176]

Two threads with the same content!!!

 

[Utah KJ]

Two threads with the same content!!!

Yes, but the OP's findings are super-special so it deserved it's own thread.

 

[alia176]

Yes, but the OP's findings are super-special so it deserved it's own thread.

 

[Alloy]

.....test it with a portable CO detector that starts reading at 0-5 ppm.

Household CO detectors prevent immediate death and lower calls to fire stations. They are not designed to show the lower term exposure levels.

Carbon monoxide detector - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

From Wikipedia.....
Standards
North America
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Association reports, "The standards organizations of Canada (CSA) and the United States (Underwriters Laboratories or UL) have coordinated the writing of CO standards and product testing. The standards as of 2010 prohibit showing CO levels of less than 30 ppm on digital displays. The most recent standards also require the alarm to sound at higher levels of CO than with previous editions of the standard. The reasoning behind these changes is to reduce calls to fire stations, utilities and emergency response teams when the levels of CO are not life threatening. This change will also reduce the number of calls to these agencies due to detector inaccuracy or the presence of other gases. Consequently, new alarms will not sound at CO concentrations up to 70 ppm. Note that these concentrations are significantly in excess of the Canadian health guidelines,"[22] (and also in excess of US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Permissible exposure limits, which is 50 ppm.)[23]

.....50ppm is the OSHA limit over 8 hours