Attached garages

[egon]

An example of problems with attached garages! [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/sto...rs-poison.html

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[Bird]

An underground garage under an apartment complex is considerably different from what we think of as an "attached garage"; i.e., a garage built as a part of a single family residence. But yes, carbon monoxide can sure kill you, although from the things I've seen, including some suicides, it does seem to be about the most painless death I know of.

I had an aunt and uncle overcome by carbon monoxide and there's no doubt both would have died if another aunt hadn't called, became concerned, went to their house to see what was wrong, and called an ambulance for them. But instead of it being caused by motor vehicles, in their case, a piece of fiberglass insulation had fallen and blocked a vent in the natural gas furnace that heated the house.

[JazzDad]

True "attached" garages can be a health threat. Not only the case you had shown, but fumes from fuel and solvents stored there can make their way into the house.

In Texas, most homeowners insurance policies comes with 10% (of the dwelling amount) for "other structures", automatically. To me, that's free insurance for a detached garage. Of course, most of us have other out-buildings, and we wind up increasing the 'other structures' coverage much above what comes with the base policy.

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Since I have no sense of smell whatsoever, toxic fumes and that sort of thing are never very far from my mind. We have an attached garage and that garage has basement access. The basement door has quite a crack under it so the exhaust fumes go immediately downstairs to the basement where they are picked up by the HVAC and pumped throughout the house. We have carbon monoxide/propane/etc. gas detectors on both levels. I can set the one in the lower level off in about five minutes by idling my 80's vintage Shivel-A pickup. I have also set the one in the lower level off by dumping freon and propane, so they are quite sensitive and mounted right on the deck. To be honest, I'm not so keen on attached garages because of the risk of a vehicle fire (case in point the Ford cruise control problem that burned down many garages.) so I am a big fan of smoke detector "SYSTEMS" where the one in the garage (or one in any other space) sets off the whole bunch. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Several years ago I drove into the lower level of a two-deck underground parking structure at just after 8 AM. The scads of office workers were arriving, and as the multitude of attractive career chicks; arriving to work in the eight-story office building; parked their cars and got out, they stepped, as I did into an oppressive atmosphere of what was surely carbon monoxide. Later that day as I inspected the building, I found only TWO of the eight exhaust fans were functional. The other six had gone down from electrical defects and lack of maintenance. A car fire, even a minor one would have been bad. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[JazzDad]

Re: "attractive career chicks".
Dave, I found it interesting that you included this aspect in your story, instead of just saying 'women'. Oh wait, it must be my formerly single mind still at work- this is a forum on country life, so surely you meant little, baby birds. Yup, that's the ticket. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Pat]

I have an attached garage, attached to my shop which is attached to the house. Actually the shop and garage share a super structure and shell (36x48 with 12:12 roof.) There are fire detectors AND smoke detectors in the ground floor (my shop) and upstairs (half mine half wife's with kiln etc.) There are also fire and smoke detectors in the garage part. The non-load bearing wall bisecting the garage-shop is sheet rocked on both sides with TWO layers of "FIRE ROCK" and the wall between the shop and house is double fire rocked too. Of course the house has fire and smoke alarms (separate devices.) All the smokes are set to alarm if one alarms. Likewise the fire detectors. These are wired to the security panel so the fire dept is called if the fire alarm is set off or a smoke alarm goes off and is not reset. The monitor folks will call to check on you if you don't reset an alarm and they call emergency services if no one answers their call.

The garage and shop have continuous soffit and ridge venting to help dissipate fumes. There is no flammable storage in the garage except fuel in the vehicles (lots of fuel in 2-3 vehicles.) We NEVER idle a vehicle in the garage for more than a few seconds, never even close to a minute. Hopefully the bunches of fire rock will slow the fire's advance from the garage to the shop or from the shop to the house and give the FD time to arrive and do something after they are called by the alarm monitor folks.

Having the garage-shop structure attached to the house is a risk but I think it is sufficiently ameliorated by the sensors/alarms and the layers of fire rock.

The garage side of the garage-shop is open ceiling (30 ft to the peak) and was constructed with insulated ventilated nail deck. Since this would expose rigid foam insulation on the underside of the roof deck I elected to add a layer of Hardie board cement board to cover the foam and make it fire resistant.

The doors between the garage and shop and shop and house are exterior grade with weather seal to reduce fume transference. There are two weather sealed doors between the shop and house, a minor inconvenience to have to open and shut 2 doors but it STOPS most noise, dust, and fumes so well only a little noise penetrates and no detectable dust of fumes. The HVAC for the garage is a separate unit from the house so fumes don't get propagated.

I realize that I have not eliminated all risk but I think I have managed it appropriately. My insurance folk are pretty happy with the steps I have taken.

So far we have never had a smoke detector or fire detector go off except as a test. The powerful range hood will evacuate the smoke of burning food so well that you can totally destroy something on the stove top or in the oven and not smell it 2 ft away. I guess that one is a mixed blessing sometimes.

Pat

[jml755]

Re: smoke detectors.
I've got smoke detectors and CO detectors on all 3 floors of my house. The one on the main floor is by the garage entry door about equidistant from the stove in the kitchen and the fireplace in the family room. Now, .... here's the weird part. If I so much as START to burn the bacon on the stove, the alarm will go off. However, I've occasionally had smoke backups when starting a fire in the fireplace due to a temporary downdraft in flue. These have been mild where the smoke just starts to curl out from around the glass doors to where there's about a foot of haze at the ceiling and your eyes sting. Opening a door/window will clear it pretty quickly, BUT the smoke alarm has never gone off! They're tested monthly and the batteries replaced semi-annually. The glass doors on the fireplace make me feel pretty safe, but it just seems weird how sensitive the alarms are to burning food.

[Pat]

Making dark toast used to set off my moms smoke detector and she woild wave a dish towel at it to get fresh air to it and it would taper off and stop. I don't think there is anything you could do with our range on top or in one of the ovens that would set off an alarm if the range hood was turned on. House rule number 32b: the range hood is turned on whenever the gas stove top is turned on. Turning on the range hood when the electric ovens are used is optional depending on the contents. I like to smell cakes baking and such.

My previous house had an old fashioned wood burning fireplace (no fan no doors, just a screen that I installed.) I had natural gas plumbed to it so I could have a gas fire to ignite logs. It sure made lighting logs easy and the clean gas flame did not smoke up the place in the early stages of getting the thing heated up a mite and drawing properly.

That house had a detached garage that could only be gotten too by cars produced well prior to WWII. Well that and small sports cars and bikes. (1928 house and the garage was not sized or sited for modern cars)

Pat

[egon]

In the frozen north many people have remote cars starters. In some cases these may inadvertently start a car in the garage with the occupants not being aware of it.

By inadvertently I mean a remote is handled or Jared in such a way that the start button could be pressed.??? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Modern farm equipment is LOADED with electrical and electronic devices such as planter monitors, after-market high intensity lights, yield monitors, radar, GPS, two-way radios, electric pumps for fertilizer and other liquids; the list goes on and on. Much of the stuff is added-on and not always in the most workmanlike manner. Lots of equipment fires occur while the stuff is standing there idle. The guy goes for lunch and gets back to a pile of burnt plastic, steel, and rubber. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] If he's lucky, the equipment is outside and doesn't burn down out his entire machine shed. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I like my buildings to be somewhat dispersed, and I like firewalls like Pat has. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]