Hi guys:
re: CO (carbon monoxide) poisoning...
I'm an ER doc for over 20 years...seen a few cases, studied a few more..
CO levels in the blood are well studied and correlate to symptoms:
10-20: headache
30-40: nausea/ vomitting
50-60: confusion/ coma
70-80: death
smoke one cigarette:
3-7
chain smoker:
8-15
Closest case I saw that would apply thte scenario on the list:
after the flood a few years ago (not Noah...the one in NC ca. 98) lots of
people had 5-8HP gas engined pumps or generators running in basements for
several hours with all the window open while pumping out the mess...this
yielded me enough patients to buy my own generator. they came in with
headache and nausea...no deaths or coma.
plumbing the exhaust outside seems very reasonable...our hospital back up
generators (huge mother diesels) are inside and plumbed out) work this way.
a little maintenance should go a long way on the fittings. put a CO monitor
nearby for back up. or...take a few deep breaths and see if you get a
headache...if you do...shut down and go breathe outside for a few minutes
and you'll be fine.
as to using up the O2 inside...
I had my 15 yr old house measured for "tightness", then made it tighter with
all the usual calk, gaskets, etc, then remeasured.. best reading was 0.9 air
exchanges per hour....i.e. the whole volume of air in the house (say 3500 sq
ft x 8ft = 28,000 cu ft) leaked in/out in 66 minutes. Shops may not be that
tight.
numbers:
at rest, you breathe 14 x/ min, an avg of 700 cc per breath
at max work, figure 28x/min and 1000 cc / breath; if you're working this
hard in your shop, you need more power tools.
you use about 5-6% of the 21% O2 in the air with each breath
1 cu ft = 28,000 cc's
someone else can do the math for the consumption by the engine. I'd bet
your fireplace uses much more (hence the reason to SAVE MONEY by providing
combustion air to the fireplace, but not using the warmed air from your
house).
My guess is it won't matter much with the leakage into the shop, from the
point of view of "suffocation"
That's my $ .02 on the medical issues.
Practically speaking, I like my noisy equipment out of my shop.
Hope this helps
Paul
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