Air quality in house

looksee

Not sure where this should go, I considered long term illness, but really its more about air quality than illness.

We have an oxygen concentrator in the living room of the house, (draws room air in, removes oxygen which is supplied to patient, remainder is discharged) this is being used in the living room and feeds to a nearby downstairs bedroom.

I also have a CPAP machine (draws in ambient air and forces it under pressure into airways to treat sleep apnoea - not nearly as off putting as it sounds ).This machine is in an upstairs bedroom. I generally have a window open at night upstairs, and several open during the day in the summer downstairs.

I am beginning to suspect that the air quality in the house is being compromised - there seems to be an unreasonable degree of sleepiness being experienced by us and the odd visitor during the day. We have a domestic gas cooker, but I cannot see it is on enough to cause problems, there are no other boilers etc that could cause any problems. The central heating boiler is new (about 3 years) and is outside the house.

I have ordered a CO detector with a read-out and will do some tests, but I wonder if anyone has come across this situation and if it has caused any issues?

looksee

So having given it some thought I am realising that it is not a carbon monoxide problem at all, that would need combustion (am I right?) and we don't have any combustion. At worst it is a 'lack of oxygen' problem - there is too much carbon dioxide, because the oxygen has been filtered out. But surely this issue would have arisen before? Will do a bit more googling. Any useful comments would be appreciated.

mickdw

It would seem that you are drawing the oxygen from the air and then dumping the air that is low in oxygen into the living space. This doesn't seem very wise. Could the oxygen concentratornot access its air from outside our from a super ventilated room.
Either way, you would need to ventilate strongly the area you have it set up in imo just thinking logically about it.

looksee

Yes, that is what I am thinking, but these units are quite common and claim to leave enough oxygen in the air for normal use. I am having trouble finding evidence of people complaining about them, so possibly it is not an issue.

It would not be feasible to set up a ducting system, and if you have a person who needs oxygen they are likely in a condition to feel the cold and having windows open (except in warm weather) is not practical. It is also a security issue to leave downstairs windows open overnight.

mickdw

But is your house ventilated as it should be or perhaps you have no vents or blocked vents

looksee

It is a 1960/70 house, it does not appear to have any vents at all, though there have never been any issues with condensation etc. There is an unused open fire place in the room so I would think that would provide some ventilation.

Is it possible to hire co2 monitors? They are rather expensive and would only be needed for a one off investigation.