Simon2021

Thanks for the recommendation. I've ordered one.

Thanks for the replies 🙂 Kierkegaard talks of a absent-minded man suprised one morning to wake up dead, his surprise comes not from discovering that he's dead but that previously he was once alive.

I'm new to narrowboat life, having moved onboard in April of this year. And I've only been using my multi-fuel stove (which was installed brand new recently) for a couple of weeks. Today, I topped up the stove with coal (Supertherm smokeless coal) at around 8am and then at 10:30am the carbon monoxide alarm went off. I opened all the windows and doors and kept them open for an hour. I also replaced the old detector with a new one that did not go off. After an hour, I closed the windows and for about two hours everything seemed fine and the new alarm didn't go off. Then the new alarm went off. It has a voice alarm that says "Carbon monoxide detected!". So I opened all the windows and doors again. At no point did I feel ill or have a headache etc. Once the windows were opened the alarm went silent. I started looking for a cause. The stove was still smouldering, the door closed and vents shut. And I checked the batteries in the engine bay and the LPG gas. Then I thought to look at the ash can. Our 'ash can' is actually just a metal bucket with no lid. When I poked around with the tongs I was shocked to see a great deal of red glowing embers. There was a lot of warmth coming of the can (but not too hot, the side of the can was warm but not hot). The only difference between today and other days that the stove has been lit is that this morning there was a lot of ash in the stove (we burnt for the first time an ecoblaze log) which I emptied into the bucket. I see now that there must have been a lot of glowing embers I didn't see. For the experienced (and not as foolish as me) it is common for ash to set of the carbon monoxide detectors?