Help… Carbon monoxide alarming

[Arthurc]

Hi everyone, need some urgent expertise/advice…
I woke up today to a text saying my Maretron CO alarm was going off, I checked everything and the rest of the monitoring systems seemed fine. 30 minutes later the Nest gave the same warning. Monitoring looked fine again, no smoke on cameras, everything normal. Too much of a coincidence to have both alarm so I asked a friend to run and check on it, he said that there is no smell (propane, fire, electrical, etc) but even the basic battery powered alarms are going off.
I am about 90 minutes away from the boat and could use advice on what to look for? I haven’t been running any heaters, the nest says that emergency heat hasn’t kicked in lately. Batteries seem to all be at normal voltages. Propane is off and no smell. Bilge pumps haven’t run, no high water alarm.

What else can create CO on a boat?

Thank you!
Arthur

 

[CharlieO.]

Was there somebody running their boat upwind?

Are they still showing alarm?

 

[Tuttouomo]

You could have a battery out gassing. Happened to me, a fried start batt.

Bill

 

[Arthurc]

No boat up wind and my boats closed up.

Good idea in the battery, how were you able to tell? The only battery/bank I’m not able to see on remote monitoring is the Genset start. But I guess if the chargers are on float I wouldn’t be able to tell? Voltage and current look normal on all banks.

Alarms are still showing…

 

[CharlieO.]

One way to tell is if it warm or hot to the touch

 

[Arthurc]

Ok thanks! 36 minutes away…. Lovely way to start off a Wednesday

 

[High Wire]

Check the fluid levels on every battery cell being charged.

 

[Arthurc]

These are all AGM but I’m going to inspect every one. I’m wondering if this is related to my post a month ago about poor house bank performance….

 

[CharlieO.]

Ok thanks! 36 minutes away…. Lovely way to start off a Wednesday

Might as well just call it an early start to the weekend.
Good luck and wear your safety glasses.

 

[Arthurc]

Haha, I like the way you think….

 

[firehoser75]

Could definitely be the/a battery issue, and cannot think of a source of CO except possibly from a heater (Espar or other?), but in case, you may want to be careful. Vent the boat well prior to spending any time on board, just in case! Safety first.
CO poisoning can "sneek up on you", and can be very serious.

Let us know what you find.
Good luck and stay safe.
PS. In case anyone reading this does not know, CO is odourless, colourless, tasteless, basically invisible, and it mixes well in air. It combines with human blood more effectively than oxygen.

 

[Arthurc]

Yeah CO is sketchy, unfortunately I don’t have one of those fancy fluke meters. Respirators and even papr systems don’t protect against it either. I’m going to open the boat up, silence the alarms, then go get breakfast and a coffee before any investigating.

 

[Comodave]

We had a battery go bad last summer and it smelled awful. Like sulphur sorta.

 

[porman]

How old is the detector? Does it have it's own battery? They have a life span of about 5 years. Last year my slip neighbor called and said there was an alarm going off on my boat about every half hour. The CO detector was exactly 5 years old as shown by the date on the back.

 

[Comodave]

We put a new CO detector in our boat yesterday because it was alarming for end of life.

 

[Arthurc]

Found it! It’s the one battery I don’t have monitored, but I should have known something was up as my A leg shore power draw was 10a, normally 5 or less. I loosened the cover and a bunch of smoke came out.

Battery power is off to the charger and the gen power cutoff is Off. Any risk of me leaving the boat for an hour while I let the ER blower clear the fumes?

 

[rslifkin]

As long as the battery isn't continuing to get hotter without power going in, it should be safe to leave and let things vent.

 

[Arthurc]

Resolved, thank you all.

I pulled the battery and it was hot even after a few hours and bulging a bit. After looking everything over and reading up on my old charger I realized it was an older Charles model that didn’t support AGMs, it appears to be hard coded to lead acid, it also has no temp probe. I didn’t catch this when I had the batteries all changed to AGMs, Once the AGM failed the charger just hammered it with amps since it thought it was discharged.

Lesson learned, got a new AGM today and will replace the charger with a Victron as I’d like to move all that direction, still debating if it’s worth the money to monitor it as well with a DCM100, likely not.

Thanks again for the help!
AC

 

[CharlieO.]

Your monitoring system worked well for you. What are you using?

 

[fryedaze]

I love it when a plan comes together.

 

[Arthurc]

Your monitoring system worked well for you. What are you using?

A few things, I have an extensive Maretron system setup with email alerting which also texts me, lots of devices and N2KView. The Maretron CO detector and SIM100 caught this first.
Next was the Nest system, 2 smoke detectors plus a thermostat for the diesel heat. I like this as it alerts through the app and in theory turns off the heating system if smoke or CO is detected. In theory as I never got to test as the heat was off. Lastly I have a camera system hooked up to a network video recorder. All of this is accessed over a T-Mobile 5g connection with a mikrotik wifi device doing backup to marina wifi, a synology router load balances those two connections.

Writing this I’m changing my mind, had I had a battery monitor on the gen battery I would have seen this instantly, I never even thought about the gen start battery…. My learning for the day

 

[slowgoesit]

Arthur, thank you, THANK YOU for following up and keeping us in the loop on this! Learned something today, and I will be looking over my batts and seeing about putting in a CO detector as well!

 

[tom.gohring]

I had a similar issue last year. Turns out the culprit was a cracked black water line. It was off-gassing methane. Replaced the line: problem solved.

 

[Arthurc]

Closing this thread out, I am installing a Victron Phoenix 12/30 1+1 charger, and also going to try the Veratron battery n2k monitor, it’s 300 bucks less than another Maretron so worth the test. The charger will treat the main engine start battery as the primary bank and trickle charge the gen which is likely all I need.
Thanks again for all the advice.

 

[Robster_in_edmonds]

Another great safety thread. Several years ago a friend took his brothers family for a week-long boat trip. My friend had been very ill and knew this would be his last time out on the boat. We were anchored near them in a quiet bay and his brother came over to borrow some distilled water because the batteries needed "topping up." He came by an hour later to let me know he had to dinghy into town to get 5 more gallons of distilled water because the entire house bank of batteries was very low on water. That night the carbon monoxide alarm went off and resetting it was no use. The brother was going to cut the alarm wires so they could sleep and address it in the morning, but instead his wife called 9-1-1. The fire department chief came out on the police dinghy and as soon as he stepped inside the boat the carbon monoxide sensor on this life vest started alarming. He woke everyone (children of both families, plus the two husbands and their wives) and escorted them outside. You guessed it, the newly-filled batteries were charging from nearly dead and were off-gassing large amounts of poisonous gas.

Morals of the story: trust the alarms; marry a smart woman; check and fill your batteries monthly, or better yet replace them with AGMs.

 

[Nick F]

^^^^ !

 

[Arthurc]

Agree with the above, although note my battery was an AGM, my understanding is when AGMs fail they will offgas like a lead acid battery, in my case caused by a poorly designed/installed charger.

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

Thanks for the post, Arthur! Have you considered not charging your start batteries off the charger?

I had a similar issue. I took the start batteries out of the battery charger system. These batteries get charged off the alternators. During the winter I run both engines and genset once a week or take a cruise up river to keep the the start batteries charged.

Again, thanks for sharing.

 

[twistedtree]

I don’t think the off-gassing from a battery is poisonous the way CO is. It will likely stink, and any hydrogen is explosive, but I don’t think any of it is poisonous. Perhaps someone with better chemistry than me can comment?

Regardless, it doesn’t diminish the hazard, particularly the explosion and fire risks, and we are lucky that CO detectors are also very good battery off-gassing detectors.

 

[Arthurc]

Thanks for the post, Arthur! Have you considered not charging your start batteries off the charger?

I had a similar issue. I took the start batteries out of the battery charger system. These batteries get charged off the alternators. During the winter I run both engines and genset once a week or take a cruise up river to keep the the start batteries charged.

Again, thanks for sharing.

I did actually, two things causes me to stick with a charger.
Since I can go a month or two without seeing the boat during the winter I didn’t want to deal with hooking up a battery tender.
But most importantly (and I’m going off of an experienced installers opinion), if my alternator fails or throws a belt on my main engine the charger will keep the system running. My understanding is with the new common rail systems and electronic controls loosing the alternator could shut you down so this seemed like a logical reason to ensure the start battery for my main engine had more than a trickle charger. How much is true I’m not sure but the Victron charger wasn’t that much $, might just be the cheapest boat thing I’ve bought in recent memory