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wood burner fumes?


uncle jules
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[quote user="uncle jules"]Might seem a bit of a daft question, but could anyone enlighten me as to whether wood burning stoves/chimneys emit carbon monoxide  fumes?  My neighbour seems to think so.......[8-)][/quote]

This may help, I googled carbon monoxide and this popped up.

Sources of Carbon Monoxide

Unvented kerosene and gas space heaters; leaking chimneys and furnaces; back-drafting from furnaces, gas water heaters, wood stoves, and fireplaces; gas stoves; generators and other gasoline powered equipment; automobile exhaust from attached garages; and tobacco smoke.  Incomplete oxidation during combustion in gas ranges and unvented gas or kerosene heaters may cause high concentrations of CO in indoor air.  Worn or poorly adjusted and maintained combustion devices (e.g., boilers, furnaces) can be significant sources, or if the flue is improperly sized, blocked, disconnected, or is leaking.  Auto, truck, or bus exhaust from attached garages, nearby roads, or parking areas can also be a source.

 I THINK THE IMPORTANT  THING IS TO HAVE GOOD ROOM VENTILATION AND A PROPERLY LINED FLUE AND THE BOILER/APPLIANCE SERVICED ANNUALLY BY A COMPETANT PERSON.

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As a simpe rule of thumb, any burning item if it has a yellow flame will be producing carbon monoxide be it solid fuel or gas or oil and will normally produce a by product of soot, so long as there is sufficient operation of the flue and adequate ventilation along with regular servicing and or cleaning of the flue/chimney there should be no problem.

 

Dave

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A straightforward chemical reaction, in fact. The first stage of the process is turning the wood cellulose into heat, carbon and Carbon Monoxide. This then burns, combines with more oxygen and forms Carbon Dioxide.

When wood is burned, particularly in an enclosed heater, such as a Poele, Insert etc, the wood fuel is effectively "Toasted". The wood firstly is turned into carbon: when the carbon burns - with a blue flame -  it is burning the Carbon Monoxide, as a fuel gas: same as a coke stove.

These enclosed type of heaters are all designed to almost totally combust the fuel, which is why when they are operating correctly, all that remains is grey ash.

Lack of proper draught, leaks from badly sealed door seals etc and a damaged or incorrect flue, can all cause CO to be emitted into the surrounding air.

 

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If you are concerned (in your house) you can buy CO detectors in the bricos. They are not too expensive. I used to have one in the UK and currently leave it in the room above the boiler (not because I think its leaking but because I don't know how well it was installed and the plumber is coming this Oct to install a new flue, plus I already had it).

Ian
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We have had a CO alarm on the wall ever since we moved in to our present home (gas central heating). Not because we think the boiler isn't working properly - it's only a year old - but because if it does go wrong and emit CO, the first you'll know about it is when you die. The alarm cost about £30 - what's your life worth? As to the number of people who don't have smoke alarms (a few pounds each - or sometimes free from local fire brigade!)....well! Stupidity, I call it.

M

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Uncle Jules ;  If your (or your neighbour's) wood stove is anything like mine, long before you succumb to the carbon monoxide you be coughing your lungs up and stumbling around the house, tears streaming down your face from the stinging eyes, unable to see across the room for the haze of smoke !

p

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[quote user="Gyn_Paul"]Uncle Jules ;  If your (or your neighbour's) wood stove is anything like mine, long before you succumb to the carbon monoxide you be coughing your lungs up and stumbling around the house, tears streaming down your face from the stinging eyes, unable to see across the room for the haze of smoke !

p
[/quote]

 hi

                    ok   last post is totally wrong wrong wrong,, the difference between C02 carbon dioxide and C0 carbon monoxide is vast.

ok complete combustion co2 is given off . it forms carbolic acid when mixed with water result it burns your eyes and will kill .but you will know about it.

      CO  you cannot smell it taste it and it will drag the extra oxygen atom out off you to make CO2 so kills extra quick and you will not know about it!!!

             some modern poele`s take the burning stage further to give even more complete combustion ,thats why they seemed to have the approval of the green brigade, and subsidised buy the french government.

     I lost one of my best mates when working in a brewery in wrexham to this so just be carefull .

                     dave

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If we are going to talk about "wrong, wrong, wrong";

I was always taught that:

the problem with CO is the way it binds with haemoglobin. When Oxygen binds with haemoglobin in your red blood cells, it is a temporary thing, the oxygen being carried somewhere in the body and then being released, allowing the haemoglobin to be carried back to your lungs and collect another oxygen molecule, etc. However, CO also binds with haemoglobin but as a permanent bond. thus, once haemoglobin has picked-up a molecule of CO, it will never release the CO and thus becomes useless and can no longer transport oxygen to where needed in your body. The CO has effectively "killed" the haemoglobin.

It is actually build up of CO2 in your blood that makes you want to breath. Hold you breath for a bit and O2 levels in the blood drop and CO2 levels rise. It is the CO2 levels that make you want to breath. If the O2 drops too much you will just pass out. A classic example of this is when swimming underwater. Before diving, if you inhale/exhale too much what you achieve is to flush loads of CO2 out of your blood stream and don't affect the O2 level too much. Thus, once you dive you delay the onset of the "breath now" warning/feeling (as the CO2 level takes longer to build to the critical level), but the O2 depletes more as you are under water longer -> you just pass-out underwater.

Either way, CO is pretty dangerous stuff and if you are at all concerned then definitely have it investigated and checked or, as others have said, you will just be totally unaware as you are being suffocated (except maybe a headache if you are lucky).

Ian
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Just to add to that....

In the late 70's Dr Jonathan Miller did a TV series called "The Body in Question" and one of the experiments he did on himself for the series was to illustrate just this very process. Oxygen combines with the haemoglobin to form oxy-haemoglobin, which is unstable and the oxygen is easily given up at the capilliary level. Ditto the carboxy-haemoglobin on the return trip to the lungs.  The interesting  part was this. When he breathed continually recyled air where the O2 went down, and the CO2 went up, he became distressed (as you would imagine !). However if the recycled air was passed through a solution which filter out the CO2, then he suffered no distress at all, just slowly (and with decreasing lucidity) fell asleep and would have proceeded into a coma, and death, had the supervisors not removed his face mask. Exposure to ordinary air was all that was needed to restore him completely after a minute or so. All this provided a somewhat livid proof of the fact that the body doesn't monitor O2 levels falling, but rather CO2 levels rising.

Anyway.. Deimos is quite right in that once the CO molecule has bound itself to the haemoglobin, that's it for that particular molecule. Finshed.

Dave& Olive  -  I admit that my earlier posting reads rather flipantly - for which I apologise - and certainly the more efficient the stove; the more perfect the combustion, thus the lower the ratio of particulates and gasses which one would detect, and the higher the ratio of noxious gasses which one wouldn't.

 I can understand the mechanics of CO poisoning when the O2 level drops and where the fuel source is pressurised (natural or bottled gas, for example) but - prior to this posting - foolishly I would have imagined that a woodburner would go out as the O2 levels dropped to the same critical levels (certainly my cheap, inefficient fire goes out if you look at it sideways, never mind restricting its oxygen !).

Are there recorded cases of deaths from woodstove flue gas poisonings?  I would be interested to read about them.

p

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all this is of enormous interest to me as we are new homeowners in france and we are looking at different ways of heating our sitting-room which is quite a big space.

as there is a "feature" chimney place in situ , we are thinking of installing a wood-burning stove.  i will heed all the advice so far provided.

i do have a further question.  apart from carbon monoxide, do these stoves produce any carcinogenic substances?  forgive my ignorance but, when i think of cigarette smoke and how toxic that is, i can't help wondering if the smoke from these stoves bear any resemblance to cigarette smoke? 

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Depending on how efficiently the stove burns the wood (see  A L L  the above), there may or may not be a lot of carbon monoxide and/or a lot of tar: just like ciggys but without the nicotine in fact, but then of course you wouldn't expect to stick your head in the flue and breathe very often.

p

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Qote: "but will not wood burn without air !!! how do they make charcoal???  dave" Un-Quote

____________________________________________________

If you are suggesting that charcoal is made by totally exluding air, then sorry, but  this is incorrect.

Any substance needs air to burn, simply because it requires oxygen. Back to basic chemical reactions once more.

Charcoal is made by almost totally excluding air. This process effectively "Bakes" or if you like "Roasts" the wood, turning the cellulose fibres into carbon or if you like, charcoal. However to succeed, the process necessarily requires some oxygen and thus some air, for the original process to "reduce" the feedstock -wood - into it basic elemental constituents, one of these being simply carbon.

The only substances which can burn in the absence of air are those which produce their own oxygen. Gunpowder is a good example, since in a gun (cannon e.g.) the propellant charge is tightly contained. The oxygen is released from the saltpeter or nitre or chemically Potassium Nitrate. Its chemical formula - KNO3 show that this compound is made up of Pottasium (K) Nitrogen (N) and Oxygen (O).

Some other chemical compounds such as Mercurous Oxide will burn in an air-excluded state, as they also release Oxygen.

To combust, properly, any enclosed carbon-fuel burning stove has to have access to a certain amount of air: more when it is burning rapidly and less when it is "Ticking Over". When a stove goes out, if it has been very well damped down, and not totally consumed the logs, what's left, tends to be part unburnt log, part charcoal: which you can use again the next time.

As I said before, the Carbon Monoxide is produced by the fuel being "baked" partially into charcoal (carbon) and this carbon combines with oxygen from the air entering the heater to form Carbon Monoxide and the CO itself thereafter burns using yet more air based oxygen and finally create Carbon Dioxide, since it has adopted another oxygen atom to form the new compound, CO2.

 

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I don't care how plausible Gluestick's explanation is, I still firmly believe charcoal is made by magic !

Just look at the evidence -

It's a black art, it made by strange people in the depths of  enchanted forests, the methods being handed down like a secret recipe from father to son..... I mean.... what more proof do you need ???

p

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