Or you might just end up dead
November 25, 2014 11:47 AM Subscribe
Carbon monoxide canary is a rousing live performance from the trad singing, carbon monoxide campaigning canary, Tommy McAnairey. Features excerpts from two of Tommy’s most celebrated songs, ‘The Ballad of Uncle Pat (Stone Dead In Three Minutes Flat)’ and ‘Any Fuel Can Harm’.
The serious part : this is part of Bord Gais campaign to make people aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide.
The serious part : this is part of Bord Gais campaign to make people aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide.
Does she float in water?
posted by maryr at 12:28 PM on November 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by maryr at 12:28 PM on November 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
Your mother is not a witch.
Your mother has been cursed by a witch.
posted by maxsparber at 1:15 PM on November 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
Your mother has been cursed by a witch.
posted by maxsparber at 1:15 PM on November 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
I recently moved a tenant into the downstairs apartment in my home, which hasn't been rented in a while, and as part of the preparation for her arrival I updated quite a bit of what was down there. That included buying a shiny new carbon monoxode detector because, well, I'd feel terrible if something happened.
About a week later, my carpenter who was doing some work on the house, mentioned the new CO detector to me and told me that he'd nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting about five feet from a detector of the same model I'd bought and that it had never gone off..
So.. Setting aside the money I may have wasted on a lemon, what kind of carbon monoxide detector should I have bought to make sure my tenant is safe (and myself, too, as I need to update the detectors in my own living space soon.) And how does one safely test one to make sure it actually works. I suppose I could hold the small self-contained unit near my car's exhaust and see if it alarmed, but what's one supposed to do normally?
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:01 PM on November 25, 2014
About a week later, my carpenter who was doing some work on the house, mentioned the new CO detector to me and told me that he'd nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting about five feet from a detector of the same model I'd bought and that it had never gone off..
So.. Setting aside the money I may have wasted on a lemon, what kind of carbon monoxide detector should I have bought to make sure my tenant is safe (and myself, too, as I need to update the detectors in my own living space soon.) And how does one safely test one to make sure it actually works. I suppose I could hold the small self-contained unit near my car's exhaust and see if it alarmed, but what's one supposed to do normally?
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:01 PM on November 25, 2014
It matters where it's positioned. I just got a new house and had gas heating installed and they fitted the carbon monoxide detector above the door to the room where the new boiler is. When building control came to inspect it he said it was no good there as, um, something something... (He was this little man with mad curly hair and he was explaining it to me enthusiastically as: "You see, you have to think, 'if I was Carbon Monoxide, where would I want to go?'" and wafting his arms around, and I was trying too hard not to laugh to pay attention.) Anyway get advice on where to put it so that it will actually detect it properly. As I now have to.
posted by billiebee at 2:27 PM on November 25, 2014
posted by billiebee at 2:27 PM on November 25, 2014
That wee man was the same one who installed the gas stove in our kitchen. A few days later I got a call at work from our neighbour (it's a duplex/double) to say, "I can smell ze gas somewhere, and it is at your house. Call ze police! Because a lady in my village, she smell ze gas, and zen BOOOM ze whole house explode!"
So I called Harry back and he came over to look at it. He was like, "Well, it's just the smell of gas - probly because when we opened the pipe there was a smell of gas. But it's all gone now, like. I mean you can still smell it, but it's all gone." (This is three days later.) "If you were the gas, where would you go? Sure, you'd smell up the place for a while? There's no gas here. Can you smell gas? [Yes] Well, I can't smell any gas." And so on with reams of irrelevant excuses for why there couldn't possibly be a problem, all delivered in a Scottish accent at 50mph.
Later on we had a new furnace installed, and they put in three CO detectors, so we're covered. Maybe.
posted by sneebler at 3:59 PM on November 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
So I called Harry back and he came over to look at it. He was like, "Well, it's just the smell of gas - probly because when we opened the pipe there was a smell of gas. But it's all gone now, like. I mean you can still smell it, but it's all gone." (This is three days later.) "If you were the gas, where would you go? Sure, you'd smell up the place for a while? There's no gas here. Can you smell gas? [Yes] Well, I can't smell any gas." And so on with reams of irrelevant excuses for why there couldn't possibly be a problem, all delivered in a Scottish accent at 50mph.
Later on we had a new furnace installed, and they put in three CO detectors, so we're covered. Maybe.
posted by sneebler at 3:59 PM on November 25, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yeah, our CO detector had very specific instructions about where to put it.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:17 AM on November 26, 2014
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:17 AM on November 26, 2014
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To be fair, she does know more than her fair share of people who died from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. It's sort of how for like, three years in a row she couldn't get through a summer without a truck rear-ending her while she was stopped at a traffic light. Unlikely bad things seem to cluster around her in unnatural defiance of the laws of probability.
... is my mother a witch?
posted by Naberius at 12:06 PM on November 25, 2014