First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

softdown

Between propane heaters and generator exhaust and the high altitude and the cold, cloudy weather....I have been feeling a bit odd.

wellbuilt

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Dry wall drying in a closed house with propane heat get me sick.
Just the drywall drying kills my nose and throat in the summer with the windows open .
The jet heaters sucks the dry wall dust in and burn it up then blow it out to breath .
less heat is better .
All so if you are using air tools , nail guns , trim guns the air blows the dust in to the heater.
Some people just get sick from the (smell) in propane .

softdown

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

I'm going to close this thread pretty soon as it has nothing to with solar.

Went without propane last night and the symptoms went away. They had been getting worse, I even called a doctor yesterday.

Apparently the lack of oxygen was having a cumulative effect. At 7800 feet, you start with a lot less.

Maybe drinking more water and getting more salt helped as well. Dogs broke into my milk and I was running drier than normal.

EDIT: Tried to delete thread with no luck. Guess it doesn't harm anything.

waynefromnscanada

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

VERY lucky it was only a lack of Oxygen and not a buildup of carbon monoxide. Amazed you're still with us and able to post.

BB.

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Some gas heaters have O2 sensors, and you might want to get a cheap carbon monoxide detector from the local hardware store (they have battery powered versions too).

I looked for a "cheap" 02 air sensor and did not find one.

Went by a place using (badly running) 5 HP concrete saw in a 1,000 square foot store front yesterday. Just an open door for ventilation. I was choking just walking by the front door--And several guys in there working (sawing/jack hammer). Tried to get them to fix the problem and one of the guys just shrugged his shoulders (yea, called the fire department--Just too dangerous--They probably want to find me in the alley outback for a "talk" now).

Keeping the thread is OK... We want to keep people safe.

-Bill

softdown

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

The small propane heaters that glow red are the cleanest running. I have used them hundreds of times. But 12 days in a row of cold, cloudy weather gave me a LOT of exposure. For most of those days, the cleanest heaters were used at the cabin while I mostly used a very old heater that burned more yellow than blue here at the shop. We also used a lot of heat to make the drywall mud dry enough to be workable the next day.

It was the "perfect storm" more or less. I thought my light headedness was age related, or sleeping wrong, for a couple days. Thats what my Google searches told me.

It is best to let folks know that extensive propane heating may catch up to you. I have used propane heat hundreds of times but never like recently. Plus I tend to seal things up very well. I thought the size of the structures and cracked/open doors vs a small heater would be alright. Well....not for 12 days in a row.

Carbon monoxide always makes my eyes burn. There was none of that. I do have a fancy propane fireplace that kept shutting itself off lately. Now I suspect that it employs a low oxygen sensor. Cabin at 8500 feet. Shop at 7800 feet. Less O2 to start with.

If you wake up and feel dizzy, turn off the propane and rough it. Even if the room is 1500 sq ft. With extensive propane usage combined with a tight structure, things can eventually go poorly.

waynefromnscanada

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

softdown wrote: »

Carbon monoxide always makes my eyes burn. There was none of that.

That is definitely not one of the medically recognized symptoms of CO poisoning!
"Each year, 20,000 Americans are rushed to emergency rooms because of carbon monoxide poisoning."
“Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. You do not smell it, taste it, see it. It overcomes the oxygen level in your body, (and) you've basically drowned,”

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/4-people-taken-hospitals-after-carbon-monoxide-sca/njh3Z/

techntrek

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Sounds similar to what happened to me after we had the exterior of our house replaced - down to studs, then resealed with Tyvek which it didn't have before. I also sealed up all of the holes in the ceiling of the 2nd floor. So, the house was air-tight when it was far from it before.

I started getting these really odd sick-feeling headaches every night about an hour after getting home from work. Our 7-seat sectional couch was almost brand new at the time. I think it was off-gassing and now that the house was sealed up I was sitting in a fog of formaldehyde, etc. Had a whole-house air exchanger installed and the headaches went away the first day it was on.

Oh, and wayne is correct, you can't detect CO until you get the usual symptoms - headache, lethargy, etc.

icarus

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Just another example of how one really ought not use unvented fuel fired heaters, ever in a reasonably tightly sealed building! In addition to CO potential, O2 depletion can be a real issue. Most modern gas buring heaters are direct vent, that is they vent thier exhaust to outdoor atmosphere , but they also draw thier combusts air from out side the building as well, serving two functions. The first is eliminating the issue of O2 depletion, and second not constantly drawing unheated air into the building.

Most new wood stoves draw outside air, and even LP fridges now come with direct vent kits. I would NEVER sleep in a bulding that has an unvented heater burning...period. There are people killed every year in our neck of the woods from using invent fuel buring applinces.

Just my $.02

Tony

oil pan 4

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

When you get Carbon monoxide in your blood you can't just step out side for a few minutes and expect it to go away.
When CO bonds to hemoglobin its half life is something like 12 hours.
So when you get poisoned with it, expect to feel like crap for a while.

Another thing with CO poisoning, it has its own unique symptom. Some where between headache and throwing up you get ringing in your ears.

softdown

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

I had zero symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Just dizziness at night. Now I suspect a simple case of blood pressure that is too low. I've had a few problems with low blood pressure in the past. My motto is "no doctor unless death is imminent". May have to reconsider....

oil pan 4 wrote: »

When you get Carbon monoxide in your blood you can't just step out side for a few minutes and expect it to go away.
When CO bonds to hemoglobin its half life is something like 12 hours.
So when you get poisoned with it, expect to feel like crap for a while.

Another thing with CO poisoning, it has its own unique symptom. Some where between headache and throwing up you get ringing in your ears.

Saburai

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Many RV dry camping (Boondocking) folks use heaters like the Olympian wave series:
http://www.amazon.com/Camco-57331-Olympian-Wave-3-Catalytic/dp/B000BUV1RK#productDetails
They are marketed to RV folks in particular. Given the relatively light nature of most RVs I would expect folks to seal up tight trying to stay warm, not a good thing...

HandyBob

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Not solar, but closely related.... I need to put my 2 cents in and I don't want any arguments because I have over 14 years of personal experience with this. I tried to discuss this before on an RV forum and was shouted down by people who had no personal experience. Drives me crazy how people speak from hearing something and don't want to hear the truth from people who actually know it.

I witnessed a retired chemical engineer get up at a camp gathering once in the desert and start yelling at people who were talking about how great those catalytic heaters are. It would have been funny if it wasn't so serious. They are dangerous. Read the warning page that comes with one. I got rid of ours in 2000.

We are spending our third winter inside of a large barn in a fifth wheel trailer that is heated with a ceramic tile heater made by Empire. The Empire SR series is still US made. I have a page on my blog about off grid heating in an RV, with a picture of this heater. The barn has a solar heating wall on it and while we have it insulated a bit and sealed pretty well, it has two large overhead doors. I defy anybody to actually seal one of those doors, so we do have some ventilation and the ceiling vents in the trailer are open. We do need heat when it gets cold outside. Our CO detector in the bedroom shows zero. It will show something every time we light the oven, so it works. We are not suffering any ill effects and have not while using one of these heaters for the past 14 years and we DO have it on when we are sleeping. Our furnace does not work. We have been using the heater we have now for a dozen years and only had to replace the tiles last year. We love this heater and I just bought a small one to put in the bathroom of the home we have under construction. The home will be super insulated. Therefore, the bedroom will get an Empire direct vent heater that I also found on eBay. The back-up to solar heat for the rest of the house will be a small outside vented decorative stove.

Added this later: I KNOW our CO detector works. The first winter we had no insulation in this barn and the wind was blowing through here. Last winter I had done about an inch of spray foam, that really tightened things up. One day the CO detector went nuts. We couldn't figure out what was setting it off until we noticed a sulfuric acid smell outside of the trailer in the barn.... That's right, the batteries for the building solar system were not vented adequately and a west wind was blowing the fumes back into the vent. I had to open a window until I installed a fan in the exhaust. I suppose I could say this fan is positive ventilation.

We are both allergic to wood smoke so that will never happen again. We had a wood stove in our last house and went through two very miserable winters. Everybody is different.

techntrek

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Sounds like your wood stove wasn't installed correctly, there shouldn't have been any smoke in your house. Like you I speak from experience, helping maintain my parent's wood furnace for over a decade and a wood stove in my house for the same.

softdown

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

Most off gridders have few realistic options other than burning wood or fossil fuels for heat. Using electric heaters takes obscene amounts of energy. I suspect that freezing kills as many as fumes. Having said that, it isn't rocket science to make a 'safe' system under ordinary circumstances. Heavy blankets produce comfort down into the high 30's. Then it starts to get drafty around the neck.

There is also a desireable ambience to the fireplace that so many truly enjoy.

waynefromnscanada

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

techntrek wrote: »

There shouldn't have been any smoke in your house. Like you I speak from experience, helping maintain my parent's wood furnace for over a decade and a wood stove in my house for the same.

I have to agree. I was brought up as a child and through my formative years on wood heat, tending to wood stoves and wood furnaces, and have heated my own place with wood since 1982. Any time there was smoke in the house it was because there was a problem, restricted chimney, smoke pipe or whatever. Everything working right = no smoke in house.

HandyBob

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

techntrek wrote: »

Sounds like your wood stove wasn't installed correctly, there shouldn't have been any smoke in your house. Like you I speak from experience, helping maintain my parent's wood furnace for over a decade and a wood stove in my house for the same.

Sorry, but you are wrong about this. You are making assumptions. if you are allergic, just the teeny bit of smoke you will always get when loading a stove is all it takes to bother you. Just the air outside downwind of somebody burning wood is enough to bother me. Being around a camp fire will tighten my throat up. People who enjoy the smell of wood smoke never understand. I can be suffering and living on antihistamines when others cannot even smell smoke.

There are other heating options. If you have enough solar power, then unless you are in the frozen tundra, you also have enough solar energy for heating. I have spent years trying to find good information on passive solar heating. Just like with solar power, it is a challenge. There is no money to be made in passive solar, so the amount of efforts put into it have been tiny and mostly met with failure. I asked every architect that I respected and found almost nothing. The best book I found on the subject was written long ago. There was a statement in there that I loved. Something about the "coming revolution" that will be caused by the invention of thermal pane glass. Our home will be passive solar using a modified Trombe wall design and the 4ft wide footing for that is done (and covered with snow). I KNOW this can work due to experiments I have made in building our barn. The lowest temp inside this year has been 42F, while -9 outside and I still have insulation to finish. This barn will never freeze because of solar heat collectors I designed & built on a clerestory wall. The house will be much better insulated and have a much greater collection to floor area ratio. Like I said, I had to figure this out for myself. A mechanical engineer I used to work with told me it would not work. His training came from the heating and cooling industry, where selling equipment is really the goal.
My response: "Did I just hear a gauntlet hit the ground?"

softdown

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

My father did a trombe wall back in the early 80's. Now it is my brothers house. Works great. I can only imagine why they are not used more often. It wasn't cheap and perhaps they are both a difficult sell and not highly profitable. So hardly anybody bothers. Hardly anybody at all.

I use passive solar (greenhouse glass) on the entire southern side. My only lament is that the sun is often rare when you need it the most...winter time. When it is cloudy, I would do better with a normal insulated wall.

Why has solar water heating failed to really catch on? My guess would be that most everyone needs a plumber for stuff like that. Very few plumbers have bothered to educate themselves on the intricacies of passive solar. Plus all of the contracting work has to be done correctly. Quality contractors are the exception to the rule in my experience. You need both a quality contractor and one who is solar savy. True solar saviness is, I believe, a bit rare.

I know of one successful solar water heating application. The owner is a Master plumber. His son is also a plumber but doesn't do solar water heating in spite of doing quality plumbing.

techntrek

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

HandyBob, check out Home Power magazine. http://www.homepower.com/ I was a subscriber for a while - tons of info on all off-grid topics, including passive solar design.

I do understand that odd things can cause an allergic reaction. My daughter is allergic to cold, which I had never heard of until she started having reactions when she was young.

softdown

Re: First winter in shop. Are fumes causing health problems?

techntrek wrote: »

HandyBob, check out Home Power magazine. http://www.homepower.com/ I was a subscriber for a while - tons of info on all off-grid topics, including passive solar design.

I do understand that odd things can cause an allergic reaction. My daughter is allergic to cold, which I had never heard of until she started having reactions when she was young.

http://www.homepower.com/solar-electricity Click on the link for a pretty picture....looks nice but the winds here could snap a couple 4x4s with that amount of resistance.