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CO detector / how much carbon monoxide is acceptable in the cockpit

Cobalt wrote:

Probably a good test that it works…

If you have smokers in your entourage, wave it close to a burning cigarette… Low-tech “bump test” without having an actual cylinder of CO gas.

ELLX

I (not joking) put one on the ground underneath the exhaust of a PA28, got in, started the engine, shut it down again, and the thing was blaring away.

Biggin Hill

Is there any way to properly test one of these detectors?

Does a diesel engine make CO?

I saw a video showing a test with a burning incense but I don’t have any handy

EDIT: a diesel makes plenty of CO

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I saw the incense sticks suggestion. Maybe they don’t like to recommend that you get too close to the exhaust of the car? That is generally much easier to arrange, unless you are a teenage parents’ house pot smoker.

EGKB Biggin Hill

@peter wrote:

Is there any way to properly test one of these detectors?

Just found this website. 28€ seems to be a fair price.

EDDS , Germany

That’s interesting…

Is it 100% CO, or air with a given PPM of CO?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Argh, no, certainly not pure CO! That would be FAAAR too dangerous. A 1l box would contaminate 10m³ to the level of 100ppm with perfect mixing. With you standing next to it, you’d get a huge whiff.

The website says it is nominally 300ppm. It seems to work by placing the detector in the box, sealing the box, burning a fixed (calibrated to the size of the box) amount of paper inside the sealed box. You now have CO in the box, in (I guess approximately) the desired concentration. They say the actual concentration will vary, but 90% of the times will be between 320 und 380 ppm, with “outliers” between 300 und 400 ppm. They say even industrial calibration gases have a 5% allowed deviation, from 285 und 315 ppm, and measuring equipment may have 20% deviation.

Looks like a nice idea for a “does it work check”, especially for the domestic kind of detectors that follow the standard that tell them to alarm only after some (IMO rather long) times, to avoid emergency services being overwhelmed by false alarms, and where indeed precision is really not important. All you want to know is “does the detector work”. Not “does it measure accurately”.

Last Edited by lionel at 21 Aug 12:47
ELLX

So any reasonably airtight box, about 1l? I can see the CO, but without care in lighting and inserting the paper I doubt the concentration would be reasonably stable, for checking calibration. Even with special paper. There may be variations in “filler” in ordinary paper.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

It sounds to me that a car exhaust will be just as good for doing a rough “is it working” test.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

With the current Euro-whatever compliant FADEC managed engines, probably not… With a 1989 560 SEL or one of the old American muscle cars, probably, yeah.

tmo
EPKP - Kraków, Poland
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