Profile For Taxman

If I understand Errol correctly:

1. Engineering standards for CO detectors are beyond the scope of this forum.

2. He doesn't know anything about engineering standards for CO detectors.

3. He trusts the people who wrote the standards for the CO detectors you buy at Home Depot.

4. He doesn't trust some stranger posting in an internet forum.

Am I summarizing the situation accurately?

Here's where I'm coming from:

1. I believe that CO exposure may be a serious safety issue for truckers. I submit, without proof, that having detectable levels of CO in the blood is a bad thing for members of this forum, just like having detectable levels of ethyl alcohol is.

2. The detectors at Home Depot were designed to do one thing, keep families from waking up dead in their homes. The secondary concern is minimizing 'false alarms'. So anything up to 70ppm is not a design issue, if you can pass a DOT physical today, 70ppm isn't going to kill you tonight.

3. Another official CO exposure standard is put out by OSHA, it's intended to keep workers healthy and safe. That's getting nearer to the issue at hand, but it assumes exposure for 8 hours followed by 16 hours of recovery. OSHA's 8 hour standard is 50ppm. A 20-24 hour standard for truckers should logically be lower than that.

4. If the FAA has a CO standard for the flight crew in charge getting you to Australia safely, I'm sure it's more useful here than the two standards I mentioned above. Another forum member suggested buying a CO detector from an avionics supplier, I think he might be on the right track.

Errol's right, this goes beyond the scope of this forum. I might be the only one here who knows anything about the subject, and I basically know enough to say "don't buy that $20 unit at Home Depot, buy a $100+ low level CO monitor instead".

I'm moving this discussion to a forum in which it is on point. I tried to summarize the HOS standards and equipment involved, and asked indoor air quality and climate comfort professionals "what should truckers do?".

If you're interested in further discussion of CO safety in your truck cab, you can find that forum thread here:

http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?2164951-CO-Safety-for-Over-the-Road-Trucking&p=25162571#post25162571

You passed the skills test in one try?

What's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that is the standard calls for x hours at y concentration before an alarm is allowed. It takes four hours to alarm at 70ppm, for example. Let me tell you, if you see 100+ppm in the flue of a gas furnace, it means there's something seriously wrong with the furnace. But it's OK for the overall level in your entire home to be 70-100ppm for a few hours???

The 2034 standard started out somewhat reasonable, but was raised over the years because idiots were calling the fire department, and the FDs were objecting to getting an emergency call and responding to find that the levels in the home were not life threatening.

Well, I don't buy a safety device to keep me blissfully happy until my life is threatened, so I object to the idea that it's not allowed to tell me anything until the situation is "life threatening". Besides that, what's "life threatening" to a normal healthy adult can be fatal to infants and elderly people with low blood oxygen levels to start with.

Or, to quote the leading combustion gas safety expert on HVAC-Talk, an internet forum for HVAC professionals:

http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?1441901-Selling-CO-Detectors

A CO detector would be used for monitoring such as in an industrial application. A CO alarm is what the code requires. However, the alarm specified in the code is listed to UL 2034. This means these alarms not not designed to alert before occupants suffer from CO poisoning but rather CO death. By design, these alarms will not alert until your COHb (carboxyhemoglobin) level is at least 5%............if its working as designed. I say that because these alarms are notorious for Not working as designed. They in fact have a dismal history not only from anecdotal evidence but from the CPSC and GRI. In a word, they are junk. They fool people into thinking they are protected from CO poisoning when in fact they are not. In a CPSC study where a bunch of these alarms had alerted, people still died. Now, add to this the legislation intended to outlaw unlisted low level CO alarms and you have to shake your head. So what to recommend or sell? Unlisted low level CO monitors. The two on the market, the CO Experts and the NCI 3000 both have similar alert levels but not exactly. To compare, a listed alarm should not alert at 69ppm for 30 days or 70ppm for up to 4hrs. An unlisted monitor will alert at 35ppm after 60 seconds. Listed alarms use unreliable MOS sensors that by design alert to false positives such as hairspray. Unlisted monitors use professional electrochemical sensors that alert only when there is CO present. Which would you want protecting you?

If you want another link, try this, but the numbers are slightly different than I'm used to seeing:

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/ul-listed-carbon-monoxide-alarm-may-not-protect-you

I'd suggest the aviation style detector they use on aircraft vs the one you can up at Wal-Mart. The reason being, the aviation style is designed for small compartments and will alert faster than the other style. They run about $130 but you can order them online.

I second that suggestion. Get a low level CO monitor with digital display. Robert, can you give me an example of the 'aviation style' units you mentioned? I hadn't thought of looking for a CO detector at aviation suppliers.

If the device you are looking at has a UL 2034 label on it keep looking, it CAN'T alert soon enough to keep you from getting sick, it's designed to alert before you die. The time and concentration limits in UL's 2034 standard are a total joke, if you're living in the same airspace the detector is in and it alerts, you are already sick from CO poisoning, guaranteed.

Some mainstream suppliers like Kidde are finally recognizing the stupidity of UL 2034 and making usable low level CO detection products, so hopefully some day there will be cheaper alternatives to the industry standard NSI 3000 monitor. You might be able to get the NSI 3000 here, it's intended to be sold by licensed HVAC contractors, so I don't know what's involved in buying one if you're not a NCI member: https://www.nationalcomfortinstitute.com/pro/index.cfm?pid=988

Kidde's low level monitor is $160 at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Kidde-KN-COU-B-Ultra-Sensitive-Battery-Monoxide/dp/B00IO64NXC

Yeah, 2,000lb of mashed VW Rabbit. Did they ever figure out for sure if his car was broken down when he changed lanes in front of that flatbed at way below highway speed with his hazards on? I always figured Harry had broken down and was desperately trying to get off the road before the car rolled to a stop in the middle of a Long Island expressway. The flatbed driver got burned pulling him from the wreckage, but he was probably killed instantly in the crash.

How big a load of bananas, is 30,000lb enough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODMye94wMfk

Here's a new one for you: Getting your load stolen while you sleep at the receiver, waiting for them to open up in the morning. At least it was just a burglary and not a robbery:

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local police are investigating the theft of a large number of guns being delivered to a sporting goods store in Olive Branch. A combined 61 handguns and six long guns were being delivered to Academy Sports on Goodman Road, according to Olive Branch Police Chief Don Gammage. He said the truck driver had fallen asleep behind the store on Sunday night, awaiting an early morning delivery Monday. When he woke up, he and Academy Sports employees found that the seals and locks had been cut off the truck, and the guns and a small amount of ammunition were gone. http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2017/05/08/mississippi-guns-stolen/101428540/

Do you happen to know what the difference between per diem and non per diem pay is? Doesn't have to be specific to Millis, just general difference.

There's been quite a bit of discussion in the past couple of weeks about per diem pay, and a lot more going back a few years.

In short, per diem pay is a pretax reimbursement of your on the road meals expense when you are traveling away from home and can't sleep in your own bed. What your employer does is reclassify part of your wages as per diem reimbursements, up to the federal standard rate of $63 a day. This reduces your gross wages on your W2, as well as your social security and medicare withholdings. It lowers your taxes, but it also lowers your social security benefit when you retire, and lowers your employer's 401k matching contributions because it reduces the wages that the match is calculated on. It also raises your debt to income ratio when you try to borrow money, because your W2 wages are lower. If you take per diem, you'll want it to be the full $63.

Tesla? Well, as long as we're dreaming: T680 or 5700 glider with high top 72" sleeper. leather, 8 bag air ride, HID headlights, arctic insulation, passenger side workstation, 600hp MX-11, no, make that a 600hp ISB with no DPF or EGR, if it gets 10mpg I'll be very happy, if it lasts 3 years I'll be super happy, 18sp Eaton, 1800rpm water cooled APU tied into the main engine's coolant to keep the engine warm all night, Insta-Lube pre-oiler, 53' HT composite Hyundai air ride dry van, self scaling via suspension pressure...