We were awakened by the CO detector chirping “FEED ME”, early this morning. Fresh batteries, and all is well.
But this reminded me of a friend whose children nearly died last fall (contractors screwed up the ducting when their house was reroofed) - and their CO detector didn’t go off. Needless to say, she replaced it THAT DAY.
So how do we know whether this thing is working?
Similarly the smoke detectors. I mean, we can press the “test” button and be sure it makes NOISE - but that doesn’t tell us whether it’ll go off when there is actually smoke.
My Sentry Night Hawk recommends lighting a match nearby and blowing it out, blowing some smoke on the detector, or else doing the same with a candle. Usually you will be amazed at the high level of CO it will read from doing this, like in the hundreds of ppm.
Thanks! We’ll try the blown-out candle trick (wearing ear protection… I have this mental image of the damn thing going out so loudly that it startles me, causing me to fall. The CO detector is at face height but the smoke detectors are high enough that we’d need ladders to reach them…
I think there’s a warning on the boxes to specifically **NOT **do this. Don’t know if its just to prevent idiots from killing themselves accidentally, or if it will damage the unit’s sensors.