We live in a 50 year old home in Wisconsin. We had a wood stove put in our basement in November, but had the wrong parts that day, so they left it out on the hearth pads but hooked it up and said we could go ahead and run it until they could come back. They didn't come back for 2 months (and only remembered after we called and said we had the fire department here) and I kept feeling light headed and checked our detectors frequently and nothing showed up. Finally, the fire chief said they were 12 years old and not working and we had been experiencing levels of 24 - 60+ during that time. I had been running a barn fan at the base of the stairs to push the warm air up, which they said could have created the negative pressure, but thankfully I did, because the CO levels were not as high in the boys' downstairs bedrooms as they were by the stove and upstairs. We now have new detectors all over and I've told everyone I know to get rid of old ones.
They came back to finish the install and stuck the stove back in where it was supposed to be with the right pieces and said no problem. He asked me to not run the fam, so I stopped. After a few days, the new detectors went off again and again, with levels from 24 – 60+. He said it could be from a car running in the garage, but ironically, when the stove doesn’t run, there is never an alarm that goes off. We turn on the vehicles, immediately back up, shut the door, and leave. On cold days, we do the same and the car runs to warm up about 15 feet away from the garage. We rarely re-enter the house after backing out and shutting the door, and when we have, it wasn't a day it went off.
The fire chief has been here over and over and checked everything in our home. If the stove hasn't been run for days, we are at zero everywhere. When they put a smoke bomb in there, there isn't visible smoke coming out from the stove unit, but our home does smell more smokey that I'd ever experienced in our old home with stove. If our woodstove has been running, that is when we get alarms, but not all the time. Our gas furnace is not yielding any results. Thinking we have a negative pressure issue, we put in a fresh air exchange system even though we have an air exchange system already in place with our gas furnace. After we installed that, we stoked up the stove, and two days later, even with the air exchanger, the readings were at 60+ again. After having it only since November, the fireplace guy even put his brush down and cleaned it out but there was almost nothing in there. We run it exactly as directed in the manual he left to help burn out the stuff left in the chimney. When the chief was here, he consistently had levels of 24 all over the upstairs and basement, with the most intense readings of 60 in the basement between the stove and stairs.
Baffled, we then ran everything in the house in an attempt to create a negative environment to see if that was indeed causing the problem, the most negative we could. After letting the stove sit for days and we had a zero rating, we ran the stove exhaust, the bathroom exhaust, the hot water ran until the heater ran and kicked in, and everything in the house stayed closed. Of course, in that afternoon while they were all there, no reading occurred and no one knew what to say so they all left. I told him, just wait a few days and it will do it again. Now it is a few days later, and the alarm went off again. BUT, we only ran the exhaust fan for 15 minutes today, and had two quick showers and nothing else was creating a negative pressure.
The fire department keeps coming out and have checked everything in the house and outside the house and no one has any idea what is going on. Today, it was blustery outside so he said it could be wind loading, but that wouldn’t explain the constant readings we had before. The wind was pretty still the first time the alarm went off, because the fire chief made note of that. We have had below zero temps for 3-4 weeks this winter and this is the first time we’ve had any snow melt since November, so you can see why we would rather be burning wood than gas!
The last thing suggested is to plastic off our main living area that has the canned lighting to see if we don't get alarms going off (so to see if the cans create that negative pressure). Tough to do since we spend all of our time there.
The fireplace guy's only solution when he left is that my son should sleep with his window open in the basement to equalize our negative pressure. I thought that was why we put in the fresh air exchange thing. What a great idea when it has been -10 to 10 above, and a great money saving idea so that our other furnace will kick in when the woodstove can’t keep up, not to mention my son freezing his toes off as that pours into his bedroom at the foot of his bed. Everyone is completely out of ideas and after being exposed to these levels for four months now (I work from home so I’m here all the time), we are about ready to make them take the stove back.
Someone said that the canned lights in a bonus room could be sucking air out of the house somehow (there are 9). We have 3 gas fireplaces, and removed one to put this wood stove in, and there was never an issue when we ran the other stoves before. We haven’t been running those and they are not metering any CO, and neither are any appliances. The outside venting of the gas furnace is up and away from the air intakes just as they are supposed to be. The house is 50 years old and not airtight whatsoever (we were in the bidding process for new windows, but they said now that is a bad idea to make it more tight).
Do you have any ideas of other things this could be? I'm not disclosing who the fireplace person is, because that doesn't matter. If he is reading this, I've attempted to create this document as accurately and fairly as possible.
It is a Lopi Leyden Cast Iron DownDraft Wood Stove.
PLEASE HELP!
They came back to finish the install and stuck the stove back in where it was supposed to be with the right pieces and said no problem. He asked me to not run the fam, so I stopped. After a few days, the new detectors went off again and again, with levels from 24 – 60+. He said it could be from a car running in the garage, but ironically, when the stove doesn’t run, there is never an alarm that goes off. We turn on the vehicles, immediately back up, shut the door, and leave. On cold days, we do the same and the car runs to warm up about 15 feet away from the garage. We rarely re-enter the house after backing out and shutting the door, and when we have, it wasn't a day it went off.
The fire chief has been here over and over and checked everything in our home. If the stove hasn't been run for days, we are at zero everywhere. When they put a smoke bomb in there, there isn't visible smoke coming out from the stove unit, but our home does smell more smokey that I'd ever experienced in our old home with stove. If our woodstove has been running, that is when we get alarms, but not all the time. Our gas furnace is not yielding any results. Thinking we have a negative pressure issue, we put in a fresh air exchange system even though we have an air exchange system already in place with our gas furnace. After we installed that, we stoked up the stove, and two days later, even with the air exchanger, the readings were at 60+ again. After having it only since November, the fireplace guy even put his brush down and cleaned it out but there was almost nothing in there. We run it exactly as directed in the manual he left to help burn out the stuff left in the chimney. When the chief was here, he consistently had levels of 24 all over the upstairs and basement, with the most intense readings of 60 in the basement between the stove and stairs.
Baffled, we then ran everything in the house in an attempt to create a negative environment to see if that was indeed causing the problem, the most negative we could. After letting the stove sit for days and we had a zero rating, we ran the stove exhaust, the bathroom exhaust, the hot water ran until the heater ran and kicked in, and everything in the house stayed closed. Of course, in that afternoon while they were all there, no reading occurred and no one knew what to say so they all left. I told him, just wait a few days and it will do it again. Now it is a few days later, and the alarm went off again. BUT, we only ran the exhaust fan for 15 minutes today, and had two quick showers and nothing else was creating a negative pressure.
The fire department keeps coming out and have checked everything in the house and outside the house and no one has any idea what is going on. Today, it was blustery outside so he said it could be wind loading, but that wouldn’t explain the constant readings we had before. The wind was pretty still the first time the alarm went off, because the fire chief made note of that. We have had below zero temps for 3-4 weeks this winter and this is the first time we’ve had any snow melt since November, so you can see why we would rather be burning wood than gas!
The last thing suggested is to plastic off our main living area that has the canned lighting to see if we don't get alarms going off (so to see if the cans create that negative pressure). Tough to do since we spend all of our time there.
The fireplace guy's only solution when he left is that my son should sleep with his window open in the basement to equalize our negative pressure. I thought that was why we put in the fresh air exchange thing. What a great idea when it has been -10 to 10 above, and a great money saving idea so that our other furnace will kick in when the woodstove can’t keep up, not to mention my son freezing his toes off as that pours into his bedroom at the foot of his bed. Everyone is completely out of ideas and after being exposed to these levels for four months now (I work from home so I’m here all the time), we are about ready to make them take the stove back.
Someone said that the canned lights in a bonus room could be sucking air out of the house somehow (there are 9). We have 3 gas fireplaces, and removed one to put this wood stove in, and there was never an issue when we ran the other stoves before. We haven’t been running those and they are not metering any CO, and neither are any appliances. The outside venting of the gas furnace is up and away from the air intakes just as they are supposed to be. The house is 50 years old and not airtight whatsoever (we were in the bidding process for new windows, but they said now that is a bad idea to make it more tight).
Do you have any ideas of other things this could be? I'm not disclosing who the fireplace person is, because that doesn't matter. If he is reading this, I've attempted to create this document as accurately and fairly as possible.
It is a Lopi Leyden Cast Iron DownDraft Wood Stove.
PLEASE HELP!
