Commercial Carbon Monoxide Detection: A Cautionary Tale

Once again, a household carbon monoxide detector has saved lives when industrial detectors failed.

When the temperatures drop, carbon monoxide incidents increase. We saw this in Calgary last week when emergency crews responded to two separate incidents in 24 hours.

In one case, a woman called 911 when her home CO detector began to sound. First responders evacuated her apartment building and measured the levels of the deadly, invisible gas.

Resident Saves the Day

It turns out a business on the main floor had a carbon monoxide leak that was not detected by CO meters on the business’s premises, nor by any detection equipment in the building’s common areas.

As you can imagine, this situation could have been much worse. Had the woman not installed a personal use CO meter, or had she not been home, other building occupants could have been injured or worse.

This isn’t the first time a household CO unit caught a carbon monoxide problem when the building’s hazardous gas monitors failed.

Not The Place to Cut Corners

This is the time of year to ask yourself: is your building ready to respond to a carbon monoxide leak? The frightening near-miss last week is an example of how important it is to have a qualified indoor air quality specialist looking after your hazardous gas detection equipment.

Most building operators place their occupants’ safety and convenience as their top priority. Like all businesses, they face competing pressures to balance their maintenance with the cost the work incurs.

In some cases, property managers who are facing pressures from our struggling real estate and rental markets have decided to forgo professional hazardous gas monitoring, and ask their mechanical company to add the task to their long to-do lists.

Without gas detection specialists looking after your commercial carbon monoxide monitor, you miss out on the expertise the engineers and technicians have spent literally decades gathering in the field. That expertise is about more than just the equipment, it’s about what happens around us, such as weather changes, that might cause the equipment to malfunction.

Anyone responsible for a large building should ensure a technician with commercial carbon monoxide monitor expertise is regularly evaluating your building’s equipment and measuring its air quality.

DID YOU KNOW? Gasonic offers free indoor air quality testing. Call us today to set up your test.