News Updates

 Amanda's Law

Amanda's Law goes into effect February 22nd in NYS.  This law requires all residences to have one or more carbon monoxide alarms installed and operational.  Homes built after January 1st 2008 are required to have a CO alarm on any floor with a bedroom, and on any floor with a carbon monoxide source.  This could mean three alarm units in a house with a second floor bedroom area, a fireplace in the living room, and a gas furnace in the basement.  The alarms need to be hard wired into the electrical system with battery backup.  For a house built before 2008, the requirement is essentially the same as for real estate sales, ie. one alarm on the lowest level bedroom area.  The alarm can be battery operated or plug in.  The law specifically forbids placing the alarm in the utitlity room with the heating plant, which is where most people install them.  For more info the text of the law can be found at   http://www.dos.state.ny.us/code/COAlarm.htm 

 

 CO Alarms vs. CO Detectors

Most of our clients are unaware of the limitations of UL listed Carbon Monoxide (CO) alarms found in most stores.  These alarms are designed to protect healthy individuals from death due to elevated CO levels.  They do not alert homeowners to chronic low levels of CO that can be harmful to healthy people and deadly over time to compromised individuals.  OSHA limits worker exposure to no more than 2 hours of exposure to levels of 30ppm, and rescue workers are required to put on respirators if levels exceed 35 parts per million, but CO alarms are designed not to alarm at these levels for a minimum of 30 days.  They won't sound in a short time period of exposure until they reach levels of 70ppm or more. 
This insensitivity is essentially by design.  This may seem hard to believe, but accurate and sensitive CO monitors are expensive, and low cost inaccurate CO monitors, if they were allowed to register low levels of CO, would raise false alarms.  Since most people aren't willing to pay for sensitive alarms, and cheap alarms that cause false alarms will just be turned off, the sensitivity was deliberately reduced. 
We find elevated levels of CO in many homes that we inspect, and the owner's CO alarms have never made a peep.  Now you know why. There is an alternative, if you're interested.  That is to buy a true CO detector/monitor, rather than a CO alarm.  These devices will give varying levels of warning at much lower exposures to CO.  I have one in my house.  Many inspectors that I know also have this type.  You can find these detectors for sale on-line.   Go to www.coexperts.com for more information about these detectors, then search on-line for your best price.  Expect to pay between $150 and $200 for a good detector.  I believe that it is worth the price to actually know what the CO levels are in your home.