Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: Eccentrica Gallumbits on 17 December, 2010, 06:59:00 pm
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Well, it went off once, saying the carbon monoxide level was 999ppm which is way too high. So I reset it, and it went off again. So I've had to turn the gas off at the mains, which means no heating, open the window (excellent, it's well below freezing) and the gas engineer will be here within 2 hours. And while I was on the phone to Transco, it went off again.
I wonder if this is why I've been feeling fluey, headachey and queasy this week. I thought I was just coming down with something. I do have the boiler serviced annually, so I am not happy.
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Either your detector is stuffed or it's maxed out and you're lucky to be with us still.
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Glad you're still with us - Are your eyes streaming?
In a previous workplace I complained for weeks about streaming eyes before the cause was found to be carbon monoxide leaking from the heating system :(
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Either your detector is stuffed or it's maxed out and you're lucky to be with us still.
I doubt it's stuffed because it's only a few months old. Still, it's cheaper to replace a carbon monoxide detector than a boiler so here's hoping.
No streaming eyes, but headachey since Wednesday, and came home at lunchtime and went to bed feeling like flu was about to descend. Sore throat, feeling generally bleurgh. So now the gas is off at the mains, window is open and I'm at a very real risk of hypothermia.
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Gas could be coming from an adjacent property. Consider getting outside.
And just in case you're not aware: CO poisoning is cumulative. You can' t just go outside and breathe good air for a bit.
My sister-out-of-law nearly got into serious trouble through not knowing this. Fault was eventually traced to an appliance in the flat below.
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Yeah, I know. I have the windows open so I reckon I'm ok for now. If the gas engineer confirms carbon monoxide, I'll go get myself seen by a doctor. And I can't go anywhere else cos I have to wait in for the engineer.
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Here's hoping it's just a faulty detector and a bit of seasonal lurgy...
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Natural gas isn't poisonous. CO results from incomplete combustion so there may be a leak from the boiler flue. If you report the problem to Transco they'll just come and isolate the incoming gas supply to shut the boiler off as their responsibility stops on the incoming mains side of the gas meter.
Recommend (a) new CO detector and (b) get boiler engineer out. Must be a "GasSafe" registered engineer. Not necessarily in that order.
If you suspect CO poisoning, then leave a note on the front door for the engineer and go round a neighbours for tea and warmth. Don't stay there and get further exposure.
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Yikes!
Fingers crossed.
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I'm not getting any further exposure. There is no combustion going on because the gas is off at the mains and the window is wide open. Once Transco have been out and decided what's what, I will phone my boiler maintenance people.
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Is your skin any pinker/redder than normal?
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I'm reminded of a story I read about someone discovering a CO leak when they picked up the cat who liked to sleep on top of the boiler and dropped it on the floor, it was too groggy to do the landing-on-its-feet thing and just went *thunk*. They suddenly realised the flu the family had been suffering from wasn't, and the boiler was promptly condemned. Everyone, including the cat, was checked over and eventually made a full recovery.
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I did think I was looking flushed at work, but I sit next to the radiator, and I wasn't feeling well. I know what the symptoms of CO poisoning are, and I have them, but they're also the symptoms of coming down with a bug. So once we know if there is a carbon monoxide problem, I will know whether or not to get medical advice.
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People with CO poisoning don't really look any pinker than normal healthy people; they just don't look pale or blue when they're dead, like 'normal' stiffs.
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And besides, normal healthy people look pale greeny brown anyway.
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And besides, normal healthy people look pale greeny brown anyway.
You must know some people who aren't zombies or goths, surely?
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You must know some people who aren't zombies or goths, surely?
One or two, but I'm still protanopic. :D
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Transco have been out, but they are not equipped with carbon monoxide detectors (he is about as happy about that as I am) so the best he could do was say keep the windows open and the boiler off until the boiler engineer has inspected it. I think I might have to go to bed with my slanket as the current temperature is -234C. Am now on hold to the boiler emergency helpline. Their calming onhold music is not calming.
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Transco have been out, but they are not equipped with carbon monoxide detectors
That's like a bus driver not being equipped with a bus.
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Or a BT engineer.
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You are not near me.
Have a sniffer but am no where near you.
Insert panty sniffing joke.
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Transco have been out, but they are not equipped with carbon monoxide detectors
:facepalm:
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Boiler engineer will ring me tomorrow to make appointment. I hope they can come tomorrow. Am now on phone to NHS24. Bloke has sexy Geordie accent.
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Kirst - if there's even a remote chance of there being a medical prob, get it checked now. At least A&E will be warm. Then sleep somewhere else until your place has been checked out properly! There must be someone you can go stay with.
The only other option if you stay at yours, you see, will be that in order to avoid hypothermia you put on every item of clothing that you own (and the corset will look peculiar with the slanket) then open all the windows and then post on here approx every 4 minutes all through the night so that we don't all worrit about you.
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Or you could go for a bike ride...
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Spoke to Nurse Mark at NHS24 and he is going to speak to the poisons expert and phone me back. I am imagining a pointy-eyebrowed bearded villain in a 3 piece suit and white coat with crazy hair and lots of bubbling testtubes.
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Or it could be Professor Snape, which would no doubt get certain ladies fizzing at the bunghole ;D
http://www.nd.edu/~tchapman/snape18.jpg
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Spoke to Nurse Mark at NHS24 and he is going to speak to the poisons expert and phone me back. I am imagining a pointy-eyebrowed bearded villain in a 3 piece suit and white coat with crazy hair and lots of bubbling testtubes.
That piece of research that showed that you can and do recognise words mostly by their ends has another data point now: I read that as "bubbling testicles" first time around.
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Spoke to Nurse Mark at NHS24 and he is going to speak to the poisons expert and phone me back. I am imagining a pointy-eyebrowed bearded villain in a 3 piece suit and white coat with crazy hair and lots of bubbling testtubes.
That piece of research that showed that you can and do recognise words mostly by their ends has another data point now: I read that as "bubbling testicles" first time around.
You're still thinking about Cougartown.
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That piece of research that showed that you can and do recognise words mostly by their ends has another data point now: I read that as "bubbling testicles" first time around.
You're still thinking about Cougartown.
mmm... Henham.
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NHS24 have consulted with the poisons people and say that there isn't really anything to be done. I'm no longer exposed to the CO, so it's just a question of getting the boiler fixed and my O2 levels will return to normal over the weekend. He suggest I might be better not being alone tonight, but this is exercising my mind somewhat. I need to be here for the boiler folk to ring me tomorrow morning and I can't really ask anyone else to stay here with the windows open and no heating. So what I might do is leave the windows open and sleep with every item of clothing and blankets that I have and set the alarm on my phone to go off every hour, or see if I can find a cheap hotel and make sure I'm back here by 8am. Bah.
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It's a pity it's so far from Essex - I'm sure bobb would he happy to keep you company overnight.
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Can't you tell the boiler people your mobile number and stay somewhere warmer?
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Or go to a 24-hr Tesco and get a new CO detector?
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Am going round to my friend's.
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Am going round to my friend's.
Very wise.
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Sensible decision Kirst, that or a hotel.
That flat's not built on an old cemetery or one of the Edinburgh catacombs is it ? :o You do seem to be having an awful lot of bad luck with it.
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I believe an old Indian burial ground is traditional :D
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Kirst - listen to me. Do NOT go into the light. Stop where you are. Turn away from it. Don't even look at it.
;)
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Kirst - if there's even a remote chance of there being a medical prob, get it checked now. At least A&E will be warm. Then sleep somewhere else until your place has been checked out properly! There must be someone you can go stay with.
+1. Glad you've got someone to sleep stay with.
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Phew, that means I don't need to stay up all night checking that you're still posting from a blanket-y nest in a freezing cold flat! Hope the plumber calls on time, turns up, and it all gets sorted. And that, whether it's a lurgy or a side effect of a nefarious boiler, you feel better soon :-)
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Hope you feel better soon Kirst.
Glad you found somewhere warm to stay the night. It would have probably been very grim indeed!
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Survived the night, waiting for boilerperson to ring
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Good to hear :-)
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+1. Glad you've got someone to sleep stay with.
And glad it isn't bobb!
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Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I said to them last night, when you ring me re appointment, ring me on my mobile as I am not staying in the flat without heating. I gave them the number. I made it very clear. Ruth dropped me back home about half an hour ago where I found a message on the answering machine saying they'll be round some time on Monday and to phone them for the details. And of course the line has been engaged for the last half hour.
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After a hour of the line being engaged, followed by 25 minutes on hold, I got to speak to a person who says they will ring me between 8-9 on Monday morning to let me know when to expect them. So I am going back to my friend's until tomorrow night. I'll sleep here tomorrow night, in a cosy corset/slanket/duvet combo because if they ring first thing Monday and say they'll be here in 20 minutes, I'll be stuffed if I'm at the other side of town.
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Sometime on Monday? I'd be getting the yellow pages out at this point.
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If I had nowhere else to go, that would be an option, but I'm not paying for someone else to come when my maintenance contract covers it and I can go elsewhere for warmth and hot water.
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Well, at least you're still breathing! Has the lurgy got any worse? If not after all that, then perhaps it was CO poisoning rather than flu.
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Sounds like time[1] to go over the contract with a magnifying glass and see what sort of cover re response times etc you're actually paying for.
[1] Actually, the time for this was before you signed up.
There's always a caveat about "periods of exceptional activity" to allow a get-out of time "guarantees".
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I don't think phoning out of hours on Friday and being offered a Monday appointment is an excessive delay. It just seems worse because it's December, not July.
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Thanks for this thread, Kirst. I'd been pondering whether it's a coincidence that for the past month or two (i.e. since I've been regularly using the oil-fired heating) I've not been feeling great, with symptoms that could be consistent with low-ish levels of CO. You've provided the motivation I needed to go and buy a CO alarm, which has reassured me that I'm not about to keel over and die...
Hope you get your boiler sorted promptly and with minimal hassle.
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I feel better in myself, systemically, if you know what I mean, but I've coughed right through last night and the night before, my throat is still sore on and off, the throat pain is moving into ear pain and my sinuses are filling up. Gah. The boiler man is coming today between 11-2 which is possibly the least convenient timeslot possible. No point going into work just to be there for an hour then come home again, and if he gets here at 2 he might well not finish till 4ish if it's something that can be fixed today, so I'll almost certainly not go in later. So I have taken today as holiday and am spending it wrapped in a blanket waiting for the bloke. The heating is broken at work again (4th time in 6 weeks) so I'm not too bothered about not being there.
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Boiler man has been and put his probe right into the cavity. ::-) He can't find anything wrong with the boiler at all, which is great news. He broke the rules to do a brief check of the cooker, which has nice blue cone flames, not "floppy yellow flames" so he thinks it's probably not that. He says it's most likely a faulty detector, but there is a possibility it could be the cooker. So I'm going to use it a lot this afternoon and if the detector goes off, I'll get a CORGI man out (or whatever they're called now), and if it doesn't, I'll assume it was just having a benny on Friday for no reason. Yay for not being dead!
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Sounds like a dodgy detector and genuine lurgy. But you did absolutely the right thing, and it is better to have a false alarm than a false non-alarm.
GWS. I am hoping the boiler man comes today to fix ours (took them a week to determine it was the fan that was bunk - apparently it was quite dramatic when he worked it out by spinning it by hand and nearly losing his eyebrows as the full burner burst into life..
Gas Safe Register is the new thing. The rules have been tightened so you *have* to pay Capita rather than being a competent person of which CORGI was a proof (but not the only proof).
..d
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Yes, and better a real lurgy than real CO poisoning. So :thumbsup: for being alive!