Boiler in the bedroom

pieroabcd

Hi
recently I've seen 3 or 4 houses (in the same area) with the boiler in one of the bedrooms (the one above the entrance door).
Isn't it dangerous? Since CO and CO2 are heavier than air they tend to float at the bottom.
I can imagine having a leak at night when everybody is asleep on the same floor where is the boiler...

And they are noisy and smelly too!

What's the rationale for this bizarre positioning? The gas still has to reach the kitchen (at the other end of the house), so a saving on gas pipes doesn't seem the reason.

Penguin_

The boiler is in a cupboard in my youngest son's bedroom in our house, I'll assume it is the same for all our style houses in the street...

MaryNB

Carbon monoxide is slightly lighter than air. The boiler is my house is located in the spare room and there's a CO monitor next to it. Never worried about it. 

user1977

If your boiler is giving out CO then it's going to be dangerous wherever it is in the house. Modern boilers are room-sealed so there's very little risk of that occurring (other gas appliances should be more of a worry, yet people seem quite happy to have open gas flames in their living rooms).

Similarly, it shouldn't be "smelly"! What smell are you talking about?

The noise is the most reasonable complaint.

Don't know about the logic of the location in this case, often it ends up in a bedroom because of a lack of other external walls suitable to put the flue through. Point us at the property listing and we might be able to have a guess.

pieroabcd

C=12
O=16
CO=28

Air is 80% N=14, <20% O=16, so air is 14-15

How can CO be lighter than air?

molerat

Fairly common in a lot of houses where the CH has been upgraded to gas.  Often not a lot of choice where to put the boiler if the house was not designed with one and these older house usually come with convenient cupboards in the bedrooms.

Flugelhorn

The problem with boiler regs these days is that they have to be on an outside wall - they used to be in assorted cupboards with long flues but now they can't - when the old boiler goes kaput often the only place is a bedroom wall

pieroabcd

user1977 said:

If your boiler is giving out CO then it's going to be dangerous wherever it is in the house. Modern boilers are room-sealed so there's very little risk of that occurring (other gas appliances should be more of a worry, yet people seem quite happy to have open gas flames in their living rooms).

Similarly, it shouldn't be "smelly"! What smell are you talking about?

The noise is the most reasonable complaint.

Don't know about the logic of the location in this case, often it ends up in a bedroom because of a lack of other external walls suitable to put the flue through. Point us at the property listing and we might be able to have a guess.

smell of gas. It was clearly perceptible. I have to say that my nose is super powerful (maybe to compensate for the sight).

Ramouth

The rationale is often that this is where the hot water cylinder was before gas central heating was put in.  We have the boiler in our spare room - might disturb winter guests when the heating kicks in but otherwise doesn’t seem an issue.  

Modern boilers really should not smell and a CO alarm goes off very loudly before dangerous levels of gas are reached giving you time to leave the room and ventilate.

When our previous boiler malfunctioned causing the CO detector to activate the boiler had already turned itself off having detected that it wasn’t exhausting correctly.

MaryNB

pieroabcd said:

C=12
O=16
CO=28

Air is 80% N=14, <20% O=16, so air is 14-15

How can CO be lighter than air?

Air is ~78% N2 and ~21% O2 not N and O

pieroabcd

MaryNB said:

pieroabcd said:

C=12
O=16
CO=28

Air is 80% N=14, <20% O=16, so air is 14-15

How can CO be lighter than air?

Air is ~78% N2 and ~21% O2 not N and O

I stand corrected!