Carbon Monoxide

Well, today I was in the garage changing my fog bulbs and I started up the car may be around 4-5 times to test out the lights. I didn't have any doors open while I was doing this. I noticed that when I came back into the house, my heart was beating at a very irregular rate and I was dizzy and had a huge headache. My dad was in the garage with me as well and felt the same symptoms. Later on tonight our carbon monoxide detector went off and has had above 0 ratings, around 22-33. I don't know if this is because of the air that came from the garage, because our garage is connected to the kitchen. We are currently opening all the windows in the house to air the place out.

I ask if anyone has had similar problems like so? And if so, what was the procedure taken? I know this is a very serious issue.

doesnt your car have a cat?? if it does, then its certainly not your car and you should get your boiler or any other gas appliance checkout, just incase its releasing CO.

doesnt your car have a cat?? if it does, then its certainly not your car and you should get your boiler or any other gas appliance checkout, just incase its releasing CO.


I have the stock muffler on - so when people can kill themselves from CO while sitting in the car and having it running, then I figured it was that. The readings are still within the house, even worse than before. Can't wait for the Greddy, won't have a problem like this. I'll get a technician to come over and check it out, that's if I even wake up in the morning :D

so.... you mean your stock muffler DOES have a CAT then????? cos you aint answered the question? You see, they only made it compulsory here in the UK in 1991, so your 93 G20, i dont have a clue about. Ive heard funny stories of people trying to gas themselves in a car with a CAT,................ IT DONT WORK FOOLS!!!

Keep us posted on what happens

Dude I'd get that checked out ASAP. I doubt it's your car since you do have CAT. I've also heard stories about people trying to kill themselves by running the car in the garage. Cars are so clean nowdays that they just end up falling asleep and waking up with the car out of gas. :D

Seems it was the water heater :) and not the car. Explains why when I came back in the house from the garage I got dizzy, because the air within the house was filled with CO. I figured it had to be from the garage/car, since that's one of the ways CO forms.

All is well. I wasn't trying to kill myself either :).

P11GT & G-Forces,
The cat is only going to be effective once it's hot. Two of it's functions are to convert hydrocarbons and CO into CO2 but it is not effective until up to temperature. Whether CO or CO2, you will still die if you stay with your car running in an enclosed space for too long! Your car will burn up the oxygen in the air and replace it with non life supporting exhaust gases. Your car would eventually stop as the oxygen content reduced to a level where it won't support combustion.

Atomic -G,
You are right, CO poisoning is serious. It's toxic in the sense that it has an affinity , and acts as a blocker, for haemoglobin (blood) thus reducing it's ability to absorb oxygen. Contrary to what you might think, one initial symptom is that you take on a pinkish hue so you look healthy. This often fools the first aider into ruling out oxygen deficiency. By the time the extremities (lips and fingertips) take on the classic blue hue from oxygen deficiency, things are pretty grim. How do I know this? - It happened to a welder where I work. He lived but was in hospital for awhile. Treatment usually consists of an oxygen mask.

OTOH, CO2 will make you breath very rapidly. You'll feel you are breathing ok but you'll begin to breath harder as your body tries to get oxygen in. The CO2 is not toxic like CO, but it can displace life supporting oxygen. You should recover once back in some good air. I have experienced this 1st hand during firefighting training.

Originally posted by T4 Primera
P11GT & G-Forces,
The cat is only going to be effective once it's hot. Two of it's functions are to convert hydrocarbons and CO into CO2 but it is not effective until up to temperature. Whether CO or CO2, you will still die if you stay with your car running in an enclosed space for too long! Your car will burn up the oxygen in the air and replace it with non life supporting exhaust gases. Your car would eventually stop as the oxygen content reduced to a level where it won't support combustion.

What! I don't know too many people with biologically sealed garages. :D Unless you went and sealed all the doors, windows and cracks wiht tape. But that's too much for some someone looking to kill themself. :p I'm still betting that you'll run out of gas first. But there is no way I'm going to test this theory. ;)

hehe intresting topic this has turned out to be :p

I believe that even if you have a cat you still put out CO, CO2, and other stuff. The purpose of the cat is to turn the harmful CO into safe CO2. However if you burn the O2 in the air and replace with CO2 the sealed garage will run out of O2 to brethe, so in a closed space CO2 isn't that good either since you think you are brething but your not.

The parking garage underneath my dorm has a huge air vent with two fans with blade diameters of about 4 feet. When I was rewiring my turnsignals to come on with my parking lamps I turned the car on and about 30 seconds later the vent opened and the garage started to suck the bad air out. Really cool. Now only if the garage doors would open I could go somewhere. They fried some microchips that control them when they enabled the student ID security on the elevators the other day. So I can leave but I can't return.