| Author | Message | ||
| steve wardwell (Steve_wardwell)
Registered Member Username: Steve_wardwell Post Number: 34 Registered: 2-2010 Posted From: 75.250.227.127  Rating: N/A |
Being liveaboards we have smoke detectors, CO detectors and large stateroom windows to be safe in our bus. Last night the CO rang out at 4am. We got up and opened the fantastic vent and after a quick ck around went back to bed and slept like babies.This calmness is the result of something that happened in our past. Once upon a time we were returning from the islands after a 4 month trip in our sailboat. We had fried our alternator weeks before and were relying on the gen for battery charging. All went well until the stator in the gen came loose and destroyed the old Onan standby....So we started our Perkins main engine and lit out for home.We power sailed home with no running lights of any kind for 48 hours straight through not daring to shut down our main engine until we pulled into our own berth..Stateside again! All problems are manageable!We plugged her in and promptly went to bed....until the Co detector went off at 2 am,We didn't sleep the rest of the night.At my brides urging we had a visit from the fire department to see what was causing the Co alarm to go off.We were all stumped.This went on for 3 nights with little or no sleep and by then my spouse was ready for a hotel.Not good..Later I was repairing the boat I found that the house, main and gen battery banks had boiled dry from the abuse of the preceding week.Then a light went off in my head and I had my answer! The hydrogen from the gassing out batteries was capable of "being seen" by our CO detector... Store this info in your "flukey file" so you might benefit from our school of hard knocks....and yes I guess its time to tend to the batteries.  | ||
| FAST FRED (Fast_fred)
Registered Member Username: Fast_fred Post Number: 1210 Registered: 10-2006 Posted From: 99.156.66.88  Rating: N/A |
The hydrogen from the gassing out batteries was capable of "being seen" by our CO detector... Store this info in your "flukey file" so you might benefit from our school of hard knocks....and yes I guess its time to tend to the batteries Very interesting! FF |