[RE-wrenches] Battery Bank Off-gassing CO?

[Bill Loesch]

Daniel,

Your home auditor should become more familiar with her own test equipment!!!

Hydrogen is well known to cause false positives for CO when using a combustion analyzer. There are sensors which exhibit _low_ cross sensitivity to hydrogen, but those are not the rule. I know of no CO sensor that is completely immune to H2.

This is not to discount other combustion venting issues, backdrafting, running a car in an attached garage (even with the garage door open), etc. as a cause for her "ill feeling" symptoms.

Please remember when you install the battery box power vent, an appropriate inlet vent, drawing preferably outside air (sealed vent system) is also required or you may further (slightly) exacerbate the CO issue by pulling your intake air out of (e.g.) the natural draft tank water heater vent. FieldControls.com has an outstanding website that educates, informs, as well as sells venting products and solutions.

Best wishes,

Bill Loesch
Solar 1 - Saint Louis Solar
314 631 1094


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Daniel Young 
  To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 8:50 AM
  Subject: [RE-wrenches] Battery Bank Off-gassing CO?


  I was emailed recently by someone in my area saying that she thinks here battery bank is going bad and poisoning her home.. My firm did not install her off grid system. Her original installer will not respond.

   

  She has an 6yr old battery bank w/ 6 Trojan L16H's (48V). The system has 1.2kw of shell solar modules with an MX60 CC and FX Inverter. She noticed feeling ill when in the basement where the system electronics were installed, so she got out a combustion gas analyzer, (she is a home energy auditor), and recorded over 500 ppm CO in the battery bank storage closet, not the battery box, but the closet that stores the outback system. That is over double the concentration that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission considers deathly toxic. She reports this has been going on for the last 1-2 months. There is one battery box in this closet, with a 3" PVC vent pipe going up to the roof. There is no power vent.

   

  Has anyone heard of a flooded lead acid battery bank emitting CO? I did not think that a lead/sulfur based battery was capable of this. Is it possible that her combustion gas analyzer is mis-interpreting some other gas as CO?

   

  We already plan to install a power vent at minimum, and to closely inspect her ventilation system and improve it as needed. Just curious if anyone else has seen this happen before.

   

  Thanks,

   



   



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