Carbon Monoxide in garage

carbon-monoxidegarage

I arrived home today from running some errands to find that the carbon monoxide alarm in my garage was going off. The display was reading 55 ppm CO (which I gather is a non-lethal but nevertheless high reading).

The garage is detached from the house and has no heat. There are several pieces of gas-powered lawn equipment stored there but nothing has been running running. I was gone from the house for several hours so I assume any exhaust from the car briefly running in the garage had dissipated. (When I left the house I just started the car and drove out… no remote start or idling in the garage.)

Does anyone have any idea what the cause of carbon monoxide might be? The CO alarm is less than a year old but maybe it is defective?

Best Answer

The answer is fairly obvious to me. For one thing, 55 parts per million isn't "high".

When cold engines first start, they run rich," Greiner said. The catalytic converter is cold and not converting deadly carbon monoxide (CO) to carbon dioxide (CO2). Concentrations in the exhaust can be more than 80,000 parts per million. Concentrations so large fill the garage with carbon monoxide in a very short time even with the door open. ...after only two minutes of warm-up in the opened garage, carbon monoxide concentrations rose to a lethal 575 parts per million

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/pages/communications/CO/co_car.html

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