Carbon monoxide and oil lamps for Cabin

[Ross]

To answer a question for you Cabin about kero lamps and CO production. I have several types of oil lamp but unfortunately my Aladdin is in need of a new mantle. So with my old trusty kero fueled wick burner chimney lamp I ran a CO test on it. Now this one is easy to test, as it has a chimney that channels all the flue gasses into a testable stream, not like a propane heater. It produced (with an embarrassingly untrimmed wick) 107ppm of CO or about half as much as a typical cigarette. Of course if you want to compare it to another source you have to consider how much fuel you're burning too. In the propane test there are two points, one the small burner does not focus all its flue gasses into a stream they simply escape from all over the burner head, so testing at 97 ppm is only giving me a very small portion of what's really there. I'd be guessing for a total but certainly well over that. The second point is how its used. A heater can easily be run 24/7, oil lamps much less.
Still shut in a closed tight room with 4 kero lamps burning away does get stuffy. My MIL gave me all her kero as she hates the smell of it burning and uses paraffin instead. I' in and out of the house so much I don't notice it, and besides my old farm house is drafty not like my MIL's fancy country bungalow!

HTH

[Cabin Fever]

So, your LP tank top Mr. Heater results were 38 to 97 ppm carbon monoxide and the kerosene lamp was 107 ppm carbon monoxide.....interesting. You'll have to visit a neighbor and get a reading on a stove's range top burner for me.

I understand that CO concentration in the vicinity of the fuel burning applicance is really not the only variable that must be considered when considering risk. One must also consider the mass of CO being expelled into a room. In other words, an applicance with a very high concentraton of CO, but producing a very small mass of CO (like a candle perhaps), may be less risky than another applicance with a low CO concentration but producing a large mass of CO (like a range top burner). Or as my old chemistry teacher always said, "The poison is in the dose (not the concentration) consumed (or, in this case, inhaled)."

Thanks!

[Ross]

Yup that s why I said

Of course if you want to compare it to another source you have to consider how much fuel you're burning too.

And compared the lamp to half a cigarette smoker. Now that smoker would have to chain smoke to keep up! The propane burner test was a single head of a twin head burner, which if its typical of the type is 8000 btu. Quite a bit more than a kero lamp. The thing about CO poisoning is the dose as you say. Because it is a cumulative thing you don't exhale it all you keep some in you and add to it even over days. Eventually you end up with flu like symptoms and if things don't improve you get sicker and sicker. Now if you remove the source you improve slowly too. Spring has the effect on people.