new example of "that CO smell"

[The Doctor]

Remember in your classes on natural gas and the like, how the instructor heated a glass coffee pot with a flame and then had you smell it? He (in the version in this neck of the woods) said that would be akin to the odor when you are also producing CO.
Here is another way we can produce that effect


It made the centrifugal switch, so it just kept on heating...

[Paul Bee]

Cover, what cover?

[vmc1161]

Backward wheel ...


Oh, how many over the years have I seen ... some guys never get it.


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[Pneuma]

The trouble with this thread is that CO has no smell.

[HvAckid82]

what you smell is the products of combustion or improper combustion.

[jdblack]

DOH!

How do you not notice that after an install?

[The Doctor]

what you smell is the products of combustion or improper combustion.

Exactly. I think the demo that I mentioned was trying to get that very point across. You won't smell CO of course, but you will smell related byproducts of bad combustion, or of exhaust even of good combustion, mixing somehow with your airstream.

I wonder what made them choose to have a glass coffee pot overheated as the example.

[The Doctor]

The trouble with this thread is that CO has no smell.

The gas-fitter class example only meant to say that you will get a similar odor when CO is somewhere it's not meant to be (like your airstream). But the OTHER stuff is what smells like the hot glass, or in the case with this backward wheel, an overheated HX?

Wish I had a nickel for every customer who said they smelled CO, which in this case they did say it. That's all I was saying.

[Pneuma]

The gas-fitter class example only meant to say that you will get a similar odor when CO is somewhere it's not meant to be (like your airstream). But the OTHER stuff is what smells like the hot glass, or in the case with this backward wheel, an overheated HX?

Wish I had a nickel for every customer who said they smelled CO, which in this case they did say it. That's all I was saying.

I understand what you are saying and I was not trying to be overly critical. But this is a public forum and I thought I should make the point that CO has no smell. You never know who might be reading these posts and I'd hate for someone to dismiss some sort of symptoms as not being CO because they could not smell anything.

[cholden324]

The trouble with this thread is that CO has no smell.

Many people also think when they smell flue gas that they are smelling CO. I had a complaint of a CO smell at a fast food restaurant. When I got up on the roof, this is what I found (see pic). The bad thing was, there had just been a tech there doing a PM. Apparently those screws at the bottom of the panels are important. The blower was simply sucking all the flue gas down into the space.