Kitchen Garden Forum

Elderly couple recently taken to hospital with suspected carbon poisoning, may I suggest readers with elderly parents buy a carbon monoxide detector [about £20] as a Xmas pressie, it's not the sort of thing they would spend £20 on.

And maybe a smoke alarm too, Shallot Man....

Although i could imagine what would be said, "that's lovely dear, but what is it", bless them.

Bought my granny a smoke alarm a few years ago and she insisted in taking the batteries out because it kept going off... She has twice had the fire brigade out in the last few years.
She is now in sheltered housing which means that she can't disable the smoke alarm anymore but her latest idea is to release the outside door anytime anyone buzzes her without even asking who they are or what they want. at 94 I don't think she is going to change...

Thinking about carbon monoxide alarms, I put my cockatiel's cage in the boiler house at night in winter as the conservatory gets a bit chilly for them. I suppose they could be like miners canaries and if there was carbon monoxide they would drop dead first!!!! An idea for a pet for an elderly relative - or would they fail to make the connection?

PLUMPUDDING. You could also go the whole hog and eat the carcass after.

Am I being a bit thick but I don't see the connection between a metal detector and a carbon monoxide alarm. Perhaps someone could explain.

Beryl.

Hi Beryl

There isn't any connection! The poster sounds like an American troll with too much time on his hands

Thanks Alan.

We replaced our carbon monoxide detector some months ago but the old one kept on bleeping We left it on the work top in the kitchens until we could get round to finding out how we could correctly recycle/dispose of it. It drove us crazy as it had a very loud beep. We then put it temporarily in the garage where it continued bleeping at regular intervals all through the night and still occasionally woke us. After 3 weeks it has now finally fallen silent but we're still unsure how we should dispose of it correctly. They are very persistent, You can't ignore them!

Primrose. You could of course removed the battery.

Not easy Shallott Man. Some are sealed units like mine. I learned the hard way some years back when mine started bleeping and called the Emergency Gas man out thinking I had a leak. I was told batteries are not supposed to be replaced the whole unit should be replaced for safety. I don't know if that still applies.

Beryl.

No, ours is a sealed unit too. I thought idly of just popping it into an anonymous waste bin in a shopping centre to get rid of the darned thing , but thought that would probably cause a public panic with the emergency services being called out !

I didn't know there were some like that, we change the batteries in ours, I wonder if they are designed that way because the detector loses its sensitivity.
How do they react to immersion in a bucket of water?

If any help I did take my old one to the tip, they have a separate bin for old batteries and I was told to put it in there.

Beryl.