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jimlongley

tiviti wrote:
jimlongley wrote:
CEOofEVIL wrote:Guys, I want to give you a major Thank you for helping me understand this situation. Seriously, thank you!

I'm going to get another Repairman out to the house this week to check to make sure everything is actually GTG/safe. Relating to the blood oxygen level, I do recall that the Doctor in the ER had mentioned that our levels were something like ".7" and .9" respectively, though I'm not 100% certain whose number was whose, and if it was a .07,.7, or something else. If I am recalling correctly, he mentioned that "normal" would have been 1.5 or something like that. Does that sound about right? I wonder if the bill they will be sending us has more information on it.

At any rate, I'm glad I was able to learn a lot from this in addition to still being in good health. FWIW, I'm not sure what type of pilot system our oven has. I do know that the previous home we lived in had an over with a pilot light in it and it was of the type that would shut the gas off if the pilot ever went out.
Do the burners "tick" when you turn them on? If so, then you have electronic ignition, and gas should not flow freely when ignition fails to happen. If you have a pilot light system, when you turn the burner on, flame will travel from the pilot to the burner and that is a every distinctive process.
The electronic ignition on the stove at my parent's home has been broken for at least 10-15 years. Since it can't ignite on its own, they keep a few of those long barbecue lighters in a nearby drawer to light the gas whenever they use it.

There are two reasons for the ignitors not to work. One is that they have failed, which could have several causes, and the other is that the safety system that is supposed to keep gas from flowing if the burner is not lit has failed, and that could be dangerous.

jimlongley

CEOofEVIL wrote:Guys, I want to give you a major Thank you for helping me understand this situation. Seriously, thank you!

I'm going to get another Repairman out to the house this week to check to make sure everything is actually GTG/safe. Relating to the blood oxygen level, I do recall that the Doctor in the ER had mentioned that our levels were something like ".7" and .9" respectively, though I'm not 100% certain whose number was whose, and if it was a .07,.7, or something else. If I am recalling correctly, he mentioned that "normal" would have been 1.5 or something like that. Does that sound about right? I wonder if the bill they will be sending us has more information on it.

At any rate, I'm glad I was able to learn a lot from this in addition to still being in good health. FWIW, I'm not sure what type of pilot system our oven has. I do know that the previous home we lived in had an over with a pilot light in it and it was of the type that would shut the gas off if the pilot ever went out.

Do the burners "tick" when you turn them on? If so, then you have electronic ignition, and gas should not flow freely when ignition fails to happen. If you have a pilot light system, when you turn the burner on, flame will travel from the pilot to the burner and that is a every distinctive process.

jimlongley

WildBill wrote:
tomtexan wrote:Does the oven have pilot lights or electronic igniters? Would a pilot light emit enough fumes to cause illness?
I didn't think that gas appliances/ovens had pilot lights anymore.

I have one sitting in my showroom at Home Depot right now.

A malfunctioning pilot light could cause a problem, which is why they were supposed to be designed to be fail safe, which often didn't happen.

jimlongley

Dragonfighter wrote:Interesting the ER found your PSO2 a "little" off. CO has a higher affinity for hemoglobin than oxygen and binds several times faster and with a stronger bond than oxygen to your blood and can show a normal count in blood or non-invasive PSO2 monitoring. In the field you treat based on symptoms and environmental findings and basically ignore the monitor. Fresh air helps but will not completely flush the blood for several days so if another problem occurs the effects may be cumulative. Standard treatment should've been an hour on 100% oxygen. If I had picked you up you would have been on a non-rebreather mask at 12 lpm O2 minimum. Severe cases require hyperbaric oxygenation.

He mentioned the oven burner needed to be adjusted to allow for the proper mix of Oxygen to Gas, and that the ratio was previously off and was letting too much gas and not enough air in.
This is where the problem lies. The gas leak itself would be a hazard but you didn't detect the odor, so either you had been smelling it long enough to deaden the sensitivity to mercaptin or your one in the minority of the population who can't smell it. The real problem is the leak in combination with the air/fuel mixture creates an incomplete combustion (FWIW dirt on burners in water heaters and furnaces can do the same thing) and incomplete combustion is where the CO is generated.

Your PEL (Prolonged Exposure Limit) is 50ppm, Toxic (Headache in 2-3 hours) is around 200 ppm and 400 ppm will give you the headache in about an hour. 35 ppm is considered "safe". I would bet a Coke that you cleared the air significantly when you evacuated and the gas man did take over an hour to get to you. Methane on the other hand, if it was concentrated enough to be toxic it would have been well into its LEL of 50000 ppm or 5% concentration. Then you may have well remodeled the place when you threw a light switch. So I'm betting on CO.

God forbid this should happen again. If it does please, please, call 911. They will get there in minutes and they have gas sensors which will tell them what gases are present and in what concentration AND they can treat you if you're sick (not to mention being able to mitigate the impromptu remodel).

One last word on the Methane exposure, if it was that that caused your symptoms then it is common for people to be cleared medically by ER personnel, but that happens regularly with CO poisoning as well.

Glad you are okay.

A misadjusted burner, or more than likely more than one, can generate a great deal of CO quickly and it is insidious. Too much gas and too little air means incomplete combustion, which yields a lot of CO.

In 17 years as a (volunteer) fireman and emt, I was involved in several incidents that were most likely CO, and more then one that was a sure thing. The worst was during a power outage when a family set up a little charcoal grill to heat a room and killed most of the family.

As suggested above, what may have happened is you got enough CO generated, breathed it and got sick, and continued to get sick from the gas leak, and then when you left the house, you provided just enough ventilation to clear up what was there.

The big problem that I see with what the gas company did was that they didn't give you enough information, either about the problem itself, or what to do about it. And there was probably a good deal of guess work involved in their troubleshooting, because the major problem was gone by the time they got started.

Of course, typically, techs like that will play things pretty close to the chest just to reduce their liability, and the landlord's guy might know what he's doing or not. I would call the gas company and ask if they have a recommended plumber or gas service to run a complete safety check and repair, knowing that the gas company will not repair stuff. If they do not recommend someone, check one of the online lists, and just for safety's sake, get a complete overhaul from the gas valve to the burners.

jimlongley

Glad you're ok, but something bothers me. Was the oven lit? CO is a by product of combustion and is not usually just the result of a gas leak. Yes, the gas can make you sick, as you described, but it's no CO poisoning.

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