On Saturday, 12 December 2020 at 22:29:19 UTC, Theo wrote:
NY wrote:
I was thinking more from the fire risk point of view, but as you say, CO
production would also be a problem.
There was a spate of deaths in Greece during the financial crisis when
people in flats who couldn't afford heating or cooking (either electric,
communal oil heat, or butane cylinders for cooking) were burning wood, which
can commonly be scavenged from wooded areas for free. Without suitable
ventilation the inevitable happened.
I wonder how many people suffered CO poisoning many centuries ago before
houses had chimneys and the smoke from an inside fire just percolated
through a thatched roof. I was reading a historical novel set in the 1100s
and there was reference to someone having a luxury that was almost unknown -
a chimney for his fire; I'm not sure whether it was entirely true that
chimneys were rare as late as the 1100s. This was in a city of mainly
professionals and shopkeepers, as opposed to little peasants' cottages.
I suspect such houses were very leaky. You had in effect a natural chimney
- not a duct, but hot gases seeped through the thatch and fresh air was
drawn in through gaps in the walls/doors/windows. Windows weren't glazed
until 17th century.

And of course they wouldn't know what people died of - life expectancy
wasn't high anyway. Excluding infant mortality, it seems to be about in the
40s, obviously highly affected by social class.

Theo

I did some experiments with a CO detector that has a display reading parts per million.
It was a FireAngel CO9D. Close to a gas hob with all burners on and no deliberate
ventilation in the kitchen for about 20 minutes it eventually read about 10ppm.
Sister-in-law had been suffering bad headaches for some time and was concerned
that the woodburning stove in her kitchen was emitting CO, so she bought that
model of CO detector. There was a lot of CO in the house at times, but not from the
stove. It turned out that burning logs in an open fireplace was the cause. The
highest concentration - something like 450ppm I think - was found in one of the
bedrooms which had a fireplace whose flue was adjacent to that of the living-room
fireplace in the same chimney stack. Loose mortar in the brickwork allowed CO
from the wood fire in the living room to reach the bedroom.
So burning charcoal or wood can generate copious amounts of CO and it can get
into unexpected places. Fortunately the problem was fixed before anyone was
killed or injured.

John