Three CO Alarms Going Off

sweaty

My parents' condo has a gas water heater and furnace and a gas stove. They are out of town and I went over to check on it. When I got there, two CO detectors were beeping every minute or so. The stove was off and they had shut off the gas valve for the water heater. I opened the windows for a while and took the batteries out of the detectors so as not to bother the neighbors.

When I went back the next day, a third detector (plugged into the wall) was also beeping every minute. Can I conclude that they have CO? I turned on the bathroom fans and left a window open.

How do I fix this?

Red Squirrel

For something like this a HVAC guy is probably your best bet. I'm guessing they must have some kind of visual detectors where they can see where it's coming from. Could be a cracked heat exchanger in a furnace, a chimney downdraft, or who knows.

Guess you could completely turn off the pilot light on all gas appliances and go from there. If it stops, then light one appliance, give it some time like a day, then try to rule out which one. Take a breather very often if you're going in that house. Like I would not stay in there for more then a few minutes at a time. Keep the windows open and if they have pets I'd take them with you at your house.

The tricky part is the furnace, you can't really turn that off all night.

Ron6519

Change the batteries in the detectors. It's a low battery indicator. Even hard wired units have a battery backup.
Ron

nap

I would have to agree. I don't know of any CO alarms that just beep for the alarm, even if you left them beep continually. Now, that isn't saying you don't have a problem. Maybe the alarms were going off until they ran out of battery power. Doesn't really explain the AC power one but I still would start with new batteries and then let the units run and then see what it happening.

Tom Struble

nap,aren't co detectors supposed to be replaced periodically?

Ron6519

CO, every 5 years.
Smoke, every 10 years.
Ron

Red Squirrel

If all of them went off at once I'd be a bit suspicious that it's not just the battery. What are the odds they all die at once? I guess if it's the exact same models and they were installed at the same time with same battery type.

nap

I don't know if the OP's system works like this but I had one that if one started chirping because of the battery, they all chirped. It was a pain to figure out which one it actually was.

but then again, maybe that was intentional so you would change all of the batteries.