CO2 buildup in house?

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Knife_man
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CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Knife_man »

Odd one but does fermentation put out enough CO2 to "feel" the effects in a house ?

So outside temperatures have fallen here and as a result I have a 60ltr ,a 30ltr and 10ltr fermenter going inside the house. Which obviously has all the windows and doors closed because it's getting cold.
I noticed that the house has been getting "stuffy". Everything improves when a window is opened but again the cold. It's also worst downstairs which I where the fermenters are , but also where we spend most of our time.
It's the first time I noticed it but also the first time I've had 100ltrs fermenting inside the house at once.

Could my 100ltr of fermenting stuff throw off enough CO2 for us to feel the effects or is this more likely a case of too many bodies in the house /not enough ventilation?

Do I need to scale down for he winter ? Or better yet find somewhere outside the house that I can keep warm enough?
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by NZChris »

CO2 is heavier than air. It can kill in high enough concentrations and if you find dead rodents in the basement, you won't be the first.

Can you pipe the CO2 outside?
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by juana_b »

Outside air is usually around 400-450ppm CO2. I suspect you're well above 1000ppm if you're noticing it. There was a thread a while ago about not fermenting in your aquarium room(everything died). The smaller you are and the closer you are to the floor will affect your exposure too.
Everything is 80F where I live, so it's rare that I even close my doors(plants like being around a ferment though). I still mostly ferment outside. Curious as to the other members' ways around this.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by elbono »

I believe one person breathing will produce about 500 liters/day of CO2. From watching fermentation locks I think I outpace any fermentation (maybe 50 liters) I have going by quite a bit.

What I call "stuffy" is high humidity (I also produce a lot of that). A well designed HVAC system will pull in a LOT of outside air to prevent "stuffiness". Is your HVAC running less? Has something else changed?

I would suspect something else.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by juana_b »

elbono wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:19 pm A well designed HVAC system will pull in a LOT of outside air to prevent "stuffiness". Is your HVAC running less?
Only newer HVAC systems will do this. If it's older you may have no outside air. Newer systems have a minimum outdoor air cfm target, and if co2 levels rise there will be modulating dampers to bring in more outside air in relation to the co2ppm setpoint(depending on the application).
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by OtisT »

Not sure if you will find this helpful or interesting. There is a chart in my unmalted all rye whiskey thread that show how much CO2 (in cubic feet) is generated by a a 5 gallon ferment based on SG. It’s on the second page of this thread: viewtopic.php?t=86790

I could not find the original web site I got that chart from or I would have sent you that.

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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by elbono »

juana_b wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:29 pm Only newer HVAC systems will do this.
I'm sure this varies by location but here older systems had a fixed fresh air intake %. Newer energy efficient systems do what you describe. Really old systems might rely on the building not being well sealed to get outside air.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by elbono »

OtisT wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:43 pm Not sure if you will find this helpful or interesting.
It's definitely interesting. If I'm reading the chart right a 20 liter wash might produce almost 1000 liters of CO2 over it's life which is a lot more than I would have guessed.

At 500 liters/day I still outpace it but not by as much as I thought.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by howie »

get a canary?
or move the MILs bed down there :)
buy a davy lamp if you're that worried, wish i'd kept mine.
co2 alarms from the big green shed.


if you don't have ventilation, it can build up.
it's heavier than air, it could be up to your waist, it nearly got me in an underground structure once.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Knife_man »

OtisT wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:43 pm Not sure if you will find this helpful or interesting. There is a chart in my unmalted all rye whiskey thread that show how much CO2 (in cubic feet) is generated by a a 5 gallon ferment based on SG. It’s on the second page of this thread: viewtopic.php?t=86790

I could not find the original web site I got that chart from or I would have sent you that.

Otis
That is helpful and interesting , thanks.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Knife_man »

I'm in the UK no basement , No HVAC .

I'm not overly concerned mainly just curious as to wheter it was possible for it to cause problems or wheter the amount of co2 was insignificant.

Stuffy probably wasn't the best word but it's the word I've always associated with it . Stale might be better a better word . You start getting tired, irritable and yawn a whole heap but the second you step outside into some fresh air your right as rain.

I'll probably not start any more big batches till i come up with a better solution (missus is a bit pissed with a 60ltr barrel "farting away" in the kitchen anyway). Im guessing having an extra source of co2 along with 4 people and two cats in a fairly small house isnt a great idea.
I suppose the greenhouse is an option but it tends drop pretty low in there overnight as well.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Knife_man »

NZChris wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:37 pm CO2 is heavier than air. It can kill in high enough concentrations and if you find dead rodents in the basement, you won't be the first.

Can you pipe the CO2 outside?
Well the cats are alive so I'm guessing not reached critical levels down near the floor yet 😂😲.

Can't think of a particularly practical way to pipe it outside without a pipe hanging out of a window which would defeat the object. Luckily they should be done before it starts getting really cold so Its not a massive issue. But I won't want to have open windows whilst I'm paying to heat the house.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Ben »

Just run a 3/8" hose out a vent hole instead of your airlock. Always tons of holes drilled in houses anyway, TV lines, cable internet, cat5, whatever. Just use one that's already there :) If it puts your mind at ease my whole house is boiler heated, I have had as much as 100 gallons fermenting inside in the winter and the Chihuahua hasn't keeled over yet.

I think you would be shocked at how many air leaks a home has. Consider an indoor fireplace... you don't suffocate when you burn in it, that oxygen has to be coming from somewhere.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by kiwi Bruce »

CO2 is not a toxic gas, in fact it's necessary for life on our planet. Our air has only 0.04% CO2, any more than that and it's absorbed by the moisture in our air. To make enough to displace the air in a room would be impossible, you'd need to be fermenting a couple of thousand gallons of wash at a time, and the ferment would have to be instant, to make enough to flood a room with CO2.
Now CO...carbon monoxide...that's a different problem completely...and you can't make that by fermenting.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Dancing4dan »

kiwi Bruce wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 6:47 am CO2 is not a toxic gas, in fact it's necessary for life on our planet. Our air has only 0.04% CO2, any more than that and it's absorbed by the moisture in our air. To make enough to displace the air in a room would be impossible, you'd need to be fermenting a couple of thousand gallons of wash at a time, and the ferment would have to be instant, to make enough to flood a room with CO2.
Now CO...carbon monoxide...that's a different problem completely...and you can't make that by fermenting.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by WiAppleOak »

I'm planning on running about 4 50 gallon batches at the same time this fall. Ill likely just run spliced tubing through a sealed blow off container and then run the blow off tube to either my HVAC exhaust or my dryer exhaust. Tubing is cheap.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by 8Ball »

CO2 displaces oxygen and you need to be careful with it the same way you would be with an inerting gas like Nitrogen — especially if you are going to enter (break the plane of a confined space opening. CO2 is heavier than oxygen and displaces it. Displace enough oxygen in the air that you breath and you can pass out and die. Two co-workers of mine entered an enclosed space that had an active nitrogen purge. The first one went in and wuickly passed out. The second went in to help him and he passed out too. A third co-worker started to go in but backed out in time and survived. The first two died. Now, at a hobby level, is there a risk of generating enough CO2 to displace enough oxygen in an area to make you pass out and die? Almost certainly not. Key word is almost because someone will always try to prove you wrong. So my message here is to be careful out in the world where you may encounter hazardous confined spaces and to follow the safety rules that apply to them. People died and the safety rules were written to prevent more tragedies.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Stonecutter »

8Ball wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:09 am CO2 displaces oxygen and you need to be careful with it the same way you would be with an inerting gas like Nitrogen — especially if you are going to enter (break the plane of a confined space opening. CO2 is heavier than oxygen and displaces it. Displace enough oxygen in the air that you breath and you can pass out and die. Two co-workers of mine entered an enclosed space that had an active nitrogen purge. The first one went in and wuickly passed out. The second went in to help him and he passed out too. A third co-worker started to go in but backed out in time and survived. The first two died. Now, at a hobby level, is there a risk of generating enough CO2 to displace enough oxygen in an area to make you pass out and die? Almost certainly not. Key word is almost because someone will always try to prove you wrong. So my message here is to be careful out in the world where you may encounter hazardous confined spaces and to follow the safety rules that apply to them. People died and the safety rules were written to prevent more tragedies.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Salt Must Flow »

I've had four 45-50 gallon fermentations going at the same time in my 30'x50' heated garage during the winter and nothing bad ever happened. I do that often, the cats never died and everything has always been fine.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Tōtōchtin »

Knife_man wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 5:52 pm I'm in the UK no basement , No HVAC .


I suppose the greenhouse is an option but it tends drop pretty low in there overnight as well.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Tōtōchtin »

Your plants in the greenhouse would love the additional CO2. You could get some commercial heating pads for your fermenter.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

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A single 200l rum ferment has killed mice in my basement, and when we had cats they would not go downstairs when the big drum was fermenting. I never felt anything but ask the mice or cats if you could and your answer might be different.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by jonnys_spirit »

If it kills mice i’m gonna keep a few going.

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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by Salt Must Flow »

zed255 wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 2:55 pm A single 200l rum ferment has killed mice in my basement, and when we had cats they would not go downstairs when the big drum was fermenting. I never felt anything but ask the mice or cats if you could and your answer might be different.
How did you determine the cause? Correlation does not equal causation.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

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Tōtōchtin wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 1:09 pm Your plants in the greenhouse would love the additional CO2. You could get some commercial heating pads for your fermenter.
T
i thought the same thing. we have a greenhouse attached to the still shed, it has air forced into it from the still shack to keep it heated. i had some bigger ferments going and actually damn near killed the tomatoes. they got really bad over the 5 days or so and then recovered after i noticed they were dying and changed over the air. they popped right back with fresh air.
mind, these were big ferments and made it very difficult to breathe in the shop. pretty sure it would have killed a person if you were locked up in there for any period of time, with no fresh air source.
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Re: CO2 buildup in house?

Post by zed255 »

Salt Must Flow wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:11 pm
zed255 wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 2:55 pm A single 200l rum ferment has killed mice in my basement, and when we had cats they would not go downstairs when the big drum was fermenting. I never felt anything but ask the mice or cats if you could and your answer might be different.
How did you determine the cause? Correlation does not equal causation.
I literally saw the little bastard in respiratory distress. I picked it up and it began to recover, putting it back on the floor finished it in a few minutes. I'm no mouse doctor but seemed enough to convince me that a layer of CO2 was on the floor at a concentration high enough to be dangerous. At human elevations there was no discernable issue.
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