As some of you were aware, we have had ice and LOTS of power outages here in
"Green Country" of Oklahoma, tending toward the Ozarks.
Our power went out about 6 pm Sunday. I got a 4-prong plug and a piece of
4-conductor romex about 8 feet long, and, after pulling the main switch,
hooked up our unused 5000 watt generator through the air conditioner outside
unit breaker box. Generator was sitting on a concrete pad outside the utility
room, and under our overhanging bedroom. I was impressed with the generator's
performance. We had power to all the lights, computer, in fact everything but
the washer, dryer and electric range. For reasons unknown, our gas heating
system refused to start up. We got by with a couple of plug-in space heaters,
and finally slept OK night before last. Wednesday evening the temp was down to
50° F in the house and we were getting ready to turn in when the CO detector in
the utility room went off. I brought it out to the living room, reset it and
took it back and it went off again. Susie was upstairs wrapping Christmas
presents in one of the bedrooms so I took the detector upstairs and told her
what had happened. She suggested (and I agreed) that I should put the detector
in the back bedroom where we normally sleep. So I did and in about 15 minutes
it went off again. I took it out, reset it again, took it back in and it alrmed
immediately. So then I reset it and took it to the front bedroom, and it
alarmed there also. About that time our next door neighbor came over and
knocked on the door to tell us the power was back on again. But with the house
full of CO, we elected to spend the night at a friend's house, so we bundled up
Robert (our 17# kitty) and stayed the night over there. This morning at 6 we
came home, disconnected the generator pigtail, turned on the switches and the
house pretty much came to life, INCLUDING the heating system. By now I believe
the comment made by the Lennox corporate consumer affairs engineer, that he
suspected the power from the generator was not clean enough for the solid state
control. (Picky, picky!!)
We would have spent the night in the house without the CO alarm and could very
likely have been dead (with very red lips) by this time. So thanks to the CO
alarm, you will have to put up with me a while longer.
Next project is to fabricate an exhaust system for the generator to get the CO
away from the house. I've also got a power line filter on the way for the
heating system's solid state control, at a cost of $29.50 plus shipping.

Moral of the story: a gasoline engine running near the house, just like a car
running in the garage, could kill you! If there is that potential, make sure
you have a good CO detector!
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!