Odorless and colorless
I finally bought a carbon monoxide detector. I’ve been meaning to get one for a while. My apartment is gas-fired, and I don’t trust the water heater and stove and whatever else to always combust perfectly.
I paid about $40 and got the kind that just plugs in. There was another detector for about $15 more that also claims to detect explosive gases, but I figure the explosive gases smell like something, so I didn’t get that. I don’t know how to tell whether or not this thing works. I pushed the test button and it simulated 400ppm of CO and the alarm freaked out, but I don’t know that it’s actually detecting carbon monoxide. The other button, the one that displays the detection memory, says that it’s so far detected zero particles of carbon monoxide. I guess that’s good, but I thought there might be at least a little bit floating around.
This detector also has a feature where I can test or silence the alarm by holding the volume button on my TV remote for five seconds. I’m not really comfortable with this. Five seconds of changing the volume probably represents the full range of my TV, but it seems like having an alarm go off when I’m trying to hear some movie dialouge is counterproductive.