ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
Hi folks. I thought I'd start this thread to make you think about the dangers of carbon monoxide and what you should do to keep you and your family safe. It is prompted by this thread and especially by Svendo's admission that he has a very old boiler and keeps putting off getting a CO detector.
I've ridden with Svendo several times and he's a nice chap - I'd hate to find out that he'd died of CO poisoning because he saved a few pounds at the supermarket not buying the detector he keeps walking past!
I'm sure that most of us know that CO is a real threat if gas appliances are not maintained properly. Every now and then a tragedy such as the 2 children dying in Corfu makes the headlines but actually, about 50 people die every single year from CO poisoning in the UK - I was nearly one of them...
I thought if I told you my story it might prompt you (are you paying attention Svendo!) to fit CO detectors and have your gas appliances checked over. Don't become an accident statistic!
A Cautionary Tale!
My house was 100 years old when I moved in. The previous owner had ripped out all the old coal fires and replaced them with gas fires and wall heaters. I have a large attic room which I use as a bedroom and office and it had a tatty old gas fire which I kept promising myself I'd replace, but then I'd change my mind and think about saving up for central heating instead. I made do...
About 7 years ago I was working from home in the winter. It was cold up in the attic so I had my gas fire on full blast from when I got up to when I went to bed. The room's only window was kept shut.
I started to come down with a cold or 'flu. At least, that's what it felt like. Over a period of days I developed a persistent headache, a sore throat and nausea, and I became increasingly lethargic and whoozy.
I became confused and unable to concentrate on the work I was doing. In the end I spent long periods of time sitting at my computer keyboard trying to remember what I was going to type.
My mind had become so fogged that I hardly realised that anything was wrong. Then my vision started to be affected. Objects in the room appeared to be shimmering and changing shape.
The room was really hot and stuffy so I decided to turn the fire off and let some fresh air into the room. I swivelled round on my office chair to face the fire and was about to stand when I spotted a malevolent-looking black shape at the top of the fire. It looked really fuzzy and I tried to make out what it was. I stared at it for about 20 seconds before I realised that it was actually a hole in the wall!
That was when I worked out what was going on - I was being gassed! I tried getting to my feet to walk over to the fire to turn it off but my legs buckled and I fell to the floor. Lights out...
I was out cold for over 2 hours before coming round face down on the carpet. I managed to summon enough strength to crawl to the fire and turn it off, then I crawled down the stairs to cool, fresh air on the first floor landing. Then I blacked out again...
After another couple of hours I came round again and recovered enough to get to my feet and go upstairs (holding my breath), open the attic window, and retreat to safety again.
I think what saved me was probably a pocket of clean air below a roomful of carbon monoxide. Nobody else lives in the house. If I hadn't come round, I'd have died there on the floor before anybody even realised that there was anything wrong.
The poisoning has left its mark on me. For months afterwards I was slurring and mixing up my words. My sister asked me if I was drunk when I rang her to tell her what had happened because she couldn't make sense of what I was saying. I now suffer from severe motion sickness. I have to double-check everything I type because phantom and rhyming words appear without me meaning to put them there. For a few months, I wasn't confident that I knew the names of my family members. Even now, I struggle with the names of some forum members that I've met on several occasions. I can't concentrate for long periods of time. I feel as though I have a permanent hangover. I gave up drinking for over a year and it didn't go away, so it's definitely not just due to my beer intake!
That fire...
It turned out that the idiot who'd installed it had done a real botch-job. (S)He had bricked up the top of the fireplace without putting a lintel in! The bricks were literally just hanging there by the mortar above and to the sides of them. They had then plastered over the bricks and installed the gas fire. It looked perfectly okay.
Over the years, the inevitable had happened. The brickwork had started to sag and the plaster had cracked. When I examined the fire after my poisoning, I could see where a big chunk of plaster had broken off and fallen down the back of the fire, exposing a gap through to the flue big enough to slide a rolled-up newspaper through. The hot gasses from the back of the wire** had been venting straight into the room.
(** There you go - I typed 'wire' instead of 'fire' - the 'w' key is not adjacent to the 'f' key so why did I do that?)
That's enough waffle - learn from my experience and don't do it the hard way -
PS I'm convinced that I've written all this before but I can't find it anywhere on CycleChat or BikeRadar. Perhaps it was on the old C+ forum, or maybe it's just my CO-addled brain playing tricks on me!
I've ridden with Svendo several times and he's a nice chap - I'd hate to find out that he'd died of CO poisoning because he saved a few pounds at the supermarket not buying the detector he keeps walking past!
I'm sure that most of us know that CO is a real threat if gas appliances are not maintained properly. Every now and then a tragedy such as the 2 children dying in Corfu makes the headlines but actually, about 50 people die every single year from CO poisoning in the UK - I was nearly one of them...
I thought if I told you my story it might prompt you (are you paying attention Svendo!) to fit CO detectors and have your gas appliances checked over. Don't become an accident statistic!
A Cautionary Tale!
My house was 100 years old when I moved in. The previous owner had ripped out all the old coal fires and replaced them with gas fires and wall heaters. I have a large attic room which I use as a bedroom and office and it had a tatty old gas fire which I kept promising myself I'd replace, but then I'd change my mind and think about saving up for central heating instead. I made do...
About 7 years ago I was working from home in the winter. It was cold up in the attic so I had my gas fire on full blast from when I got up to when I went to bed. The room's only window was kept shut.
I started to come down with a cold or 'flu. At least, that's what it felt like. Over a period of days I developed a persistent headache, a sore throat and nausea, and I became increasingly lethargic and whoozy.
I became confused and unable to concentrate on the work I was doing. In the end I spent long periods of time sitting at my computer keyboard trying to remember what I was going to type.
My mind had become so fogged that I hardly realised that anything was wrong. Then my vision started to be affected. Objects in the room appeared to be shimmering and changing shape.
The room was really hot and stuffy so I decided to turn the fire off and let some fresh air into the room. I swivelled round on my office chair to face the fire and was about to stand when I spotted a malevolent-looking black shape at the top of the fire. It looked really fuzzy and I tried to make out what it was. I stared at it for about 20 seconds before I realised that it was actually a hole in the wall!
That was when I worked out what was going on - I was being gassed! I tried getting to my feet to walk over to the fire to turn it off but my legs buckled and I fell to the floor. Lights out...
I was out cold for over 2 hours before coming round face down on the carpet. I managed to summon enough strength to crawl to the fire and turn it off, then I crawled down the stairs to cool, fresh air on the first floor landing. Then I blacked out again...
After another couple of hours I came round again and recovered enough to get to my feet and go upstairs (holding my breath), open the attic window, and retreat to safety again.
I think what saved me was probably a pocket of clean air below a roomful of carbon monoxide. Nobody else lives in the house. If I hadn't come round, I'd have died there on the floor before anybody even realised that there was anything wrong.
The poisoning has left its mark on me. For months afterwards I was slurring and mixing up my words. My sister asked me if I was drunk when I rang her to tell her what had happened because she couldn't make sense of what I was saying. I now suffer from severe motion sickness. I have to double-check everything I type because phantom and rhyming words appear without me meaning to put them there. For a few months, I wasn't confident that I knew the names of my family members. Even now, I struggle with the names of some forum members that I've met on several occasions. I can't concentrate for long periods of time. I feel as though I have a permanent hangover. I gave up drinking for over a year and it didn't go away, so it's definitely not just due to my beer intake!
That fire...
It turned out that the idiot who'd installed it had done a real botch-job. (S)He had bricked up the top of the fireplace without putting a lintel in! The bricks were literally just hanging there by the mortar above and to the sides of them. They had then plastered over the bricks and installed the gas fire. It looked perfectly okay.
Over the years, the inevitable had happened. The brickwork had started to sag and the plaster had cracked. When I examined the fire after my poisoning, I could see where a big chunk of plaster had broken off and fallen down the back of the fire, exposing a gap through to the flue big enough to slide a rolled-up newspaper through. The hot gasses from the back of the wire** had been venting straight into the room.
(** There you go - I typed 'wire' instead of 'fire' - the 'w' key is not adjacent to the 'f' key so why did I do that?)
That's enough waffle - learn from my experience and don't do it the hard way -
- Fit CO detectors and check them regularly.
- Have your gas appliances serviced regularly.
- Don't put off the first two!
PS I'm convinced that I've written all this before but I can't find it anywhere on CycleChat or BikeRadar. Perhaps it was on the old C+ forum, or maybe it's just my CO-addled brain playing tricks on me!
I'm going to get two tomorrow. We only have a gas boiler no fires. Thanks for waking me up Colin.
