We are at the very RV friendly Walmart in Chehalis, WA. It is about two hours from our next stopover, the 7 Cedars Casino on the Hood Canal which in turn is an hour from the ferry to Victoria where we have reservations on the Friday afternoon ferry.
We got all our buying done today. First stop was Camping World where we picked up an RV toilet for Brooks' motorhome. While we were there we bought a hard wired CO detector for our motorhome. They are supposed to be replaced every four years and ours was over due.
Then we went to the last Walmart Supercenter in Oregon where we bought a new 26' TV for the front of the motorhome. I hoped it would just be a simple swap with the 22' one there now but it is not going to be that easy. I will have to drill a couple of holes in my homemade mount to make the larger screen fit without rubbing the ceiling. Not a big job but also not one I can easily do here.
I thought I would install the new CO detector but when I opened the box I noticed the manufacture date was 2009 and it was clearly marked, "Replace by June, 2013"! These things are $79 and I was only going to get two years out of it instead of four! We are too far away to return it but I will phone them in the morning to tell them I will be returning it in November. I walked over to Home Depot and bought a battery operated CO detector as well as a new "kitchen" smoke detector for $32 total. The "kitchen" smoke detector is supposed to ignore normal kitchen emissions to reduce annoying false alarms.
I was once exposed to CO poisoning when I worked. My workmate Pal Horvath and I were driving the Sno Cat up a mountain one evening when Pal suddenly asked me if his face was red. I glanced over and his face was beet red! I told him so and he said, "So is yours"! I stopped the machine and we walked around in the cold snow for a half hour until our colour had returned. Carbon Monoxide is an odorless, colorless, deadly gas and if Pal had not noticed my red face we both could have died that night. I had no sensation that I was being poisoned, we just would have "gone to sleep"! If you do not have a CO detector, buy one! If yours is over four years old, replace it!
We went for a long urban hike here in Antalya
7 hours ago
Hi Croft. Not sure about your "kitchen" smoke detector. You should ensure that the device is UL or small cUL which means it is approved for use in both Canada and the USA. You are able to find them with a pause button which shuts off the alarm; however if the smoke condition continues it will set it off again.
ReplyDeleteI think it is OK. It is a Kidde brand and has the UL stamp. We once bought one intended for RV use that basically worked the same way and did not go off every time I made toast or boiled water.
ReplyDeleteGood for you for getting the word out about CO, it is really a deadly and quiet killer. I'm amazed at your story because I was thinking you were on an open vehicle of some kind - what do I know about snow cats :)
ReplyDeleteI do admit I'd pull the batteries from our smoke detector in the RV whenever I was cooking, and often forget about them. Not good.
Question is though, how do you check to see if your CO detector is really working or not? I don't feel good about pressing a test button. Same goes with the LP detector? Some say you can hold a butane lighter to it without lighting, just letting the gas escape and it should set off the LP detector. Haven't tried it. Either way, I agree it is a serious issue and not to be taken lightly.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder.