RVers who use their portable–or presumably their rig’s–generator at home in time of a power outage could put themselves at high risk for carbon monoxide poisoning. On Tuesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released findings of an experimental study to determine how close a generator can be placed to a home while not risking occupants lives with gasoline generator emissions.

Many portable generator manufacturers recommend that an extension cord of no more than 15 feet be used to reduce the chances of wire overheating. Using a single story home, the NIST study found that 15 feet can be much too close for safety. Researchers used both a test home and computer models to multiple scenarios involving an open window, wind speed and direction, and other factors.

“We found that for the house modeled in this study,” researcher Leon Wang says, “a generator position 15 feet away from open windows was not far enough to prevent carbon monoxide entry into the house.” Winds perpendicular to the open window resulted in more carbon monoxide entry than winds at an angle, and lower wind speeds generally allowed more carbon monoxide in the house. “Slow, stagnant wind seems to be the worst case because it leads to the carbon monoxide lingering by the windows,” Wang explains. Researchers determined that placing the generator outside of the airflow recirculation regions near the open windows reduced carbon monoxide entry.

Since it may be impossible from a homeowner to determine airflow recirculation patterns near their own home, the study suggests users may need to keep their generators–or RV generator exhaust system–perhaps as far as 25 feet away from the home. Need more convincing? The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that during the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, up to half of the incidents of non-fatal carbon monoxide poisonings involved generators run within seven feet of homes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 10:55 am and is filed under carbon monoxide poisoning, health problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.