Clayton, OH

I know you think that is too personal a problem to share on line, but your probably thinking about the wrong kind of gas.

Testing for a gas leak is sometimes a tricky business. (Are you thinking about a different kind of gas now?) Some gases found in the home can be hard to find and give you different readings depending on what your testing for and where your testing. Why you ask? Well some gases are lighter than air and some are heavier than air.

For example, natural gas is a compound of gases that are combustible. It is made up of, normally depending on the area of the U.S. your in, mostly methane(95%), but it also contains elements of ethane, propane, and carbon dioxide. Methane is lighter than air, so if there isn't much of the other gases (all heavier than air) natural gases (at room temperature) will rise. Therefore, a natural gas leak should be tested for at the pipe or appliance that it services.

Air is light, so there are very few gases that are lighter than air. Here is a list of all but the most obscure:

Methane Ammonia Hydrogen Helium Hafnium Diborane Acetylene Ethylene Hydrogen cyanide Nitrogen Carbon monoxide

Combustion gases contain many elements that are normally lighter than air after being heated. After cooling these gases are heavier than air at room temperature. High efficiency combustion of natural gas produces nitrogen (basically non-flammable), carbon dioxide (basically non-flammable), water vapor and nitrogen oxides and sulfer dioxide (giving that familiar smell). These gases are carried away by the flue (hopefully) which vents to the outside air. If there is a leak in the flue gases could escape into the environment where they stay until vented in someway to the outside. Since carbon dioxide is relatively easy to test for this is the combustion bi-product that is the most indicative of a problem with gases in the home. If there is an abundance of carbon dioxide in your home then there are most likely other combustion by-products (even more dangerous than carbon dioxide) in evidence too.

Luckily, correcting this problem is rather simple. First, get an expert to find where the problem is and correct it and second, air out your home. The EPA says that indoor air is, on the average, much more polluted than outside air. Todays houses are built tight to save energy and ventilation is sometimes ignored in favor of energy and money savings.

Jack Gilleland

Home Inspection Services

Clayton, Ohio

I've been absent from the Rain much too long. Almost forgot how, well not really. Just suffice to say that I am back to my not so normal self and back in the Rain.

Subject of the day is CO detectors and their placement. According Wikipedia carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless, yet highly toxic gas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide). It is formed when combustion (carbon fuel and oxygen) is lacking enough oxygen to produce the, much more preferable, carbon dioxide. Of course, neither is healthy, but the human body is much more tolerant to CO2 (carbon dioxide) than CO (carbon monoxide). That is not the focus of this post.

This is the focus of this post. We all know that CO is dangerous and that it is important to keep the levels as low as possible, but what many don't know is that even having a CO detector may not be enough to keep you safe. CO detectors need to be placed in the most critical areas of the house. A furnace that is creating excess levels of CO is not overly dangerous if it isn't leaking into the ducts that supply warm air to your home. This is true because the CO from combustion will be sent up the chimney, exhausting it into the atmosphere. How do you know your furnace isn't leaking combustion gases into your home? There in lies the problem.

Call an inspector that does indoor air quality testing. They can tell you what if any dangerous gases are in your home and in some cases what quantities and where they are coming from. With this information you can place your new CO detectors in the right spots. If you don’t know a good indoor air quality inspector in your area email me, I’ll give you some to pick from. And for safety’s sake have your furnace tested before the next heating season.

In my first blog concerning sprinkler systems I tried to dispel some of the myths that have come to seem like truth. Sprinkler systems have come to be known to save lives and property in businesses all over the country and yet they are frowned upon in residential buildings. Looking at the reasons for this could give us a clue to why most homeowners don’t have fire suppression systems.

Cost. Using the building cost of an average 2,000 SF house (National Average 2007) at $103.00 per SF (this can fluctuate greatly according to area and level of quality/luxury) putting the total cost of the home at approximately $206,000. The cost of this average home’s sprinkler system will be from (using high end averages) $3,100 (again this can fluctuate greatly according to area and level of coverage) to $5,100. A study done by the NFPA gave a national average of $ 1.61 per SF.

How Do They Work. They easiest way to explain how sprinkler heads work is to send you to this link, http://www.homefiresprinkler.org/Consumer/ConsWork.html. Note that each sprinkler head has a sensing bulb. The actual possibility of a malfunction is less than that of a modern plumbing system.

How Do They Look. A recessed plate covers most residential sprinkler heads and it looks like this:

Yes this is all you see on the ceiling or wall.

What Do I Need Sprinklers For.

Installing both smoke alarms and a fire sprinkler system reduces the risk of death in a home fire by 82%, relative to having neither (Source, NFPA). Usually a home with a sprinkler system has extinguished the fire before the Fire Department can arrive on the scene. View this telling, eye opening video: http://www.homefiresprinkler.org/Consumer/ConsTimeline.html

If you have any questions concerning home fire sprinklers you can call your local fire department and ask for an educational kit or a list of approved vendors. Home Inspection Services Clayton is not a vendor and has no connection to any vendors of home fire sprinklers. If you already have a system in the Clayton/Englewood/Dayton area we can answer questions about them or lead you to someone whose expertise exceeds ours (Like the Fire Marshall).

Jack Gilleland

Home Inspection Services Clayton

Clayton, Ohio

Sources: USFA (United States Fire Administration), FEMA, NFPA

What happens if you have a fire in your home? The first thing that happens (hopefully) is your smoke alarms/detectors sound with that annoying alarm that occurs every time I broil meat. The next thing that happens is you evacuate the house or in some cases look for the fire extinguisher and try to handle it yourself. A smoke detector is designed to save lives, but not your home. Don’t get me wrong here I’m not advocating going “detectorless”, quite the contrary, they are a necessary part of a homes safety equipment. I’m just saying your home should have more.

Scenario: You just signed a contract to build your new home and your specifying what is to go into that home. Definitely, you should have sufficient smoke detectors and Carbon Monoxide detectors, but what about a home sprinkler system?

Home Sprinkler System Myths.

When a one sprinkler head is activated, all the sprinklers activate. This is not true. The only sprinkler head that is activated is the one that has sensed the temperature rise. The others will not activate unless they sense the higher temperature.

A sprinkler could accidentally go off, causing severe water damage to a home. This is not true. With 50 years of data to back present information, there is a very remote chance of this happening. In fact, home sprinkler systems are specifically designed to limit this possibility.

Water damage from a sprinkler system will be more extensive than fire damage. This is not true. Sprinkler systems limit the growth of the fire and suppress smoke and heat damage. If the alternative is to let it burn until the fire department arrives the damage in an unsprinkled house is much more costly than a sprinkled house.

Smoking or cooking could set off the sprinklers. This is not true. Sprinkler heads activate at 155 degrees F. Since they are mounted on the ceiling it is almost impossible to activate a sprinkler head by any normal activity. The heads are also covered to prevent accidental damage to the head itself.

These are the usual objections to a home sprinkler system now lets talk money. The average home sprinkler system is less than 1% of the total cost of the house. Depending on the insurance carrier and your location, the savings on your home insurance bill could be as much as 15%.

Jack Gilleland

Home Inspection Services

Clayton, Ohio

Sources: Sources: USFA (United States Fire Administration), FEMA, NFPA

Thought I would put these up before we got more snow tomarrow and I don't venture outside at all. Our local gov't. decided that they would save some money not salting or scraping the roads untill all the snow fell. Not sure if that means April or what.

As you can see we've been working on it some.

Did I ever tell anyone that I hate snow?

Jack Gilleland

Home Inspection Services

Clayton, Ohio