That was... interesting...

[K Frame]

Sitting in my living room last evening when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye...

IN my pellet stove.

Cracked the door and there's a little house wren staring back at me.

Closed the door and had to think about how to get him out of there. Didn't have a net, didn't want to hurt him (or her)...

Figured I'd end up with a bird loose in the house but I turned off all of the lights downstairs, closed all of the curtains to make it as dark as possible, then I opened the patio door. Popped the door open on the stove and Mr/Ms Wren didn't need any incentives to get out of there. Launched out and immediately headed for, and out, the patio door, much to Seren's consternation.

Went and looked and yep, they were building a nest in the vent pipe. I'm going to check this afternoon and if there are no eggs I'm going to get rid of the nest and seal up the vent pipe for the summer. If there are eggs... hell, not sure what I'll do. Maybe take the bottom cleanout cap off so if any of them do drop down they'll go straight through and out instead of ending up in the stove.

[230RN]

Feed any eggs to Seren.  (I doubt there'll be any.)  Don't try to mother them.  You've already done half your good deed by helping the bird to escape. The other half would be to close off the entry point ASAP.  And remember that next Spring.   Check the exhaust piping for blockages before next Winter. CO₁ can put you and Seren to Sleep with a capital S before you know it.

Mama and Papa can easily start over --the season's young yet.

[Ben]

I had that happen to me a couple of years ago. Early in the morning, and I had thought some animal got in the house or something. I was looking all over before I saw the bird smacking himself against the stove door. The stove is near a door, so I was lucky that he immediately saw his escape route. If had had gone the other way, it would have been hell herding him out of the house.

That Fall, my chimney sweep installed a cover on the stove pipe that should have been there to begin with. I did see a wasp in there this last Fall, but it put a smile on my face to watch that bastard burn. 

[K Frame]

"CO1 can put you and Seren to Sleep with a capital S before you know it."

That's why I have TWO CO detectors -- one in the room with the stove and the other one in my bedroom.

[230RN]

"CO1 can put you and Seren to Sleep with a capital S before you know it."

That's why I have TWO CO detectors -- one in the room with the stove and the other one in my bedroom.

 

I've got one from Kidde and it just does not seem sensitive enough.

I take off some window screens between October and April since there are no bugs to contend with, we usually have lots of mild weather through the winter, and I like to stick my head out the window to look around.  Over the years I've had two Magpies come in the house, but they seem to be pretty smart about getting back out.   But you enter the room and zoom flapity-flap, off they gp, startling the crap out of you.

Slightly off from the "critters in the house" subject, I had left one of those small aluminum refrigerator thermometers on my balcony in a sort of half-assed calibration to my regular outdoor thermometer.  So there I am in the parking lot getting ready to go somewhere and I see a magpie up there land on my balcony railing, then hop down out of sight.  WTF, I didn't leave any food out, so WTF was he doing?  A second later I saw him take off with that little thermometer in his beak.

I instantly thought of Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie" opera, where a servant girl gets blamed for stealing a silver utensil when in reality a magpie had stolen it.

So somewhere in some magpie's nest mommie and poppie  magpie will know how hot or cold it is.

Terry

REF (Overture to "The Thieving Magpie" if you want to listen for that long):

https://youtu.be/Xys1zd7HFtY (9:18)

[Nick1911]

I've got one from Kidde and it just does not seem sensitive enough.

As part of my mechanical contractor license, I have to take 8 hours of continuing education per year.  The city puts on a convention so everyone can get those hours easily, which is nice.  A few years ago, I attended a seminar about carbon monoxide safety.  I'm pretty well versed in it, but a tidbit I did not know was that the UL code governing CO detectors actually specifically prevents them from going off below a threshold.

If an alarm is exposed to 400 PPM, it must alarm between 4 and 15 minutes.
If an alarm is exposed to 150 PPM, it must alarm between 10 and 50 minutes.
If an alarm is exposed to 70 PPM, it must alarm between 60 and 240 minutes.
An alarm must NOT sound when exposed to 30ppm continuously for 30 days.

The reason given was that during the development of these alarms and the codes around them, it was found that many nuisance alarms happened below that 30ppm threshold.  Cooking, vehicle exhaust from outside, candles, etc.  Nuisance alarms are very bad because they train the occupants to ignore the alarm or disconnect it.

[French G.]

My big CO learning was that decomposing meat products make a lot of it. I had a four gas detector we were primarily using to make sure a tank we were working on didn’t mushroom cloud from H2S. Took it inside to see if my suspicion was true that a household name in chicken parts was routinely exposing its employees (and for that day me) to an unsafe work environment. So walkway grating over 5000 gallons of cooked sludge and there was a good bit of h2s when the pneumatic stirrers were running. Not IDLH(that’s for you Terry) but close. CO was insta alarm though. Company seemed none too concerned they put people in that every day, way over eight hour PEL. Of course a cigarette immediately pegs out a CO meter too.

House wrens, I have one that is forever finding a new creative nest spot in my garage. I try not to disturb her. Chimney swifts everywhere too and robins nesting on the crook of my gutter downspouts.

[K Frame]

The one in the living room does a read out of PPM. It's never moved off 0.

[MechAg94]

If someone put in an OSHA complaint, they might get a visit pretty quick.  Plus, you never know when some condition might change to cause the CO concentration to go higher for a while. 

[230RN]

The one in the living room does a read out of PPM. It's never moved off 0.

Neither has mine, a Kidde KN-COPP-B-LPN and the "Peak Reading" function gives a zero also. About eight years ago they re-did the furnace so that instead of stacking through the roof, they ran the exhaust out the side of the building.  I started to notice when the breeze came from that direction, I started to feel just a bit woozy.

Psychosomatic?

 Maybe.

Nevertheless, I'd like to have the sensitivity in the device to confirm that I'm not just fooling myself.  This wooziness was true both before and after I quit smoking in 2017, but never before they started venting through the side of the building.

Not enough to raise hell about, but it's moderately annoying. As far as I know, nobody else has noticed this.

I dunno.  Given my druthers, I'd like to at least see some sub-deadly numbers without an alarm.  That's what I'd druther.

Terry

[cordex]

Well timed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjlsI3K2E8k