My carbon monoxide alarm went off last night at midnight shortly after everyone went to bed. Instead of leaving the house (stupid, I know) I checked the alarm and it showed 0 ppm so I removed the batteries and replaced them. The alarm then restarted normally and showed 0 ppm and never went off again (this morning it still shows 0 ppm). I placed another CO alarm near this one and it never went off. No one shows any signs of CO poisoning.
If there was a CO threat should the alarm have shown > 0 ppm? Shouldn’t the alarm have continued to sound after it restarted normally?
I’m going to contact the fire department this morning to see if they can come out to test the house.
Had something similar happen in my son’s room in the middle of the night a few months ago. After inspecting the unit we noticed that the CO alarm was past its expiry, so we replaced it. Not sure if that caused the false alarm, but you may want to check the date on the unit.
The alarm was blaring about a meter from my son’s crib and he barely stirred! I jumped out of bed like we were getting home invaded by zombie alien rapists.
They do go off if the battery is dying. After that happened the first time I decided to keep two around so I’d have a way to verify. Hopefully the batteries don’t expire at the same time.
I’m curious why you keep it next to the crib. I have one near the furnace in the basement and the other over that on the main floor. I’d want the detector near the possible source of CO, in my case it’s only the furnace or the fireplace which is right over the furnace upstairs. I don’t recall seeing anything about ideal placement but I figured that made the most sense.
They often say to place them near where you’re sleeping. A pretty common thing in CO poisoning I guess is just going to bed and never waking up.
Anyway, I would guess it could be low battery or definitely check the expiration date on the detector. I replaced a plug-in one (plugged into the wall, no batteries) because it started blaring. Scared my wife to death, I looked at the thing and figured out (I may have had to Google the instruction manual) that the constant tone (rather than an intermittent “beeping” alarm tone) meant that it should be replaced. Sure enough, there was an expiration sticker on it and it was a couple of months past expiration.
We keep it next to the crib because we wanted a detector in the boy’s room, and that’s the only available outlet spot. We have one on each floor of the house, including the basement. The provincial law is that each floor must have a fire detector, we just took it one step further to include CO detectors.
I should have mentioned that in my house it’s quite easy to hear what’s going on through most of it. Just the detector in the basement would have been fine, and we got the second one following a false alarm for an expired battery to have something to verify against. Depending on your house having them in the bedrooms would make a lot of sense. We don’t have an attached garage or any gas utility so the sources of CO are limited.
I had a First Alert smoke and CO detector that would go into test mode for no apparent reason. Come to find out that TV remote controls and even some lights can cause this. The voice would start out with “Testing” and a little later say “0 ppm”. Very irritating so I finally replaced it.