Home Safety Must Haves- Carbon Monoxide Detectors
As a Realtor in Park City, I always strongly suggest a property inspection when representing clients who are purchasing a home or condominium. Inspections conducted by licensed professionals are an important part of real estate purchasers’ due diligence process. In addition to structural, cosmetic, plumbing or electrical issues issues, all buyers are concerned with potential health risks that may exist in the property.
Doug Farmer, a professional property inspector with Pillar to Post Home Inspections suggests that all homes have, at the very least, one carbon monoxide (CO) detector in them. “The detector should be placed where you can hear it if it goes off while you are asleep. A CO detector does not have to be placed on the ceiling, since unlike smoke, CO has approximately the same weight as air.”
I recently read an article in the Park Record about a Park City couple that narrowly escaped from potentially fatal carbon monoxide poisoning in their home. They awoke in the middle of the night to multiple carbon monoxide alarms in their home- without them, the first responders said, they would have perished in their sleep.
Summit County describes carbon monoxide and its effects in the following way: “A colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that enters the bloodstream through the lungs and binds more readily to the red blood cells than oxygen, thereby preventing oxygen uptake. Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning in healthy people vary from fatigue at low carbon monoxide concentrations to irritability at moderate levels and death at very high concentrations.”
Summit County provides some information on their website- Carbon Monoxide. Local fire departments and county health officials also offer free information and can be a great resource.
Posted by Quinn Eichner on
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