Saturday, May 16, 2009

Just rotten eggs

A few days ago I was peacefully sleeping when I was awoken by an annoying, loud, high pitched alarm. After a couple minutes of searching I determined that the alarm was from the carbon monoxide detector in the house.

In addition to the alarm going off there was the odor of sulfur in the house. This odor was emanating from the garage where to my dismay the battery charger was still on.

Now normally the battery charger shuts off when the pack reaches a certain voltage. For some reason the timer did not shut off the charger. So all evening the batteries were venting hydrogen sulfide gas.

A quick email to the electric vehicle discussion list on hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide detectors gave me a few responses. Other people have had the same thing happen. Apparently the sensor in the carbon monoxide detector is fooled by hydrogen sulfide. So the alarm ended up being a false alarm.

I'll have to watch the charger a little closer to figure out was is going on. Hopefully it won't happen again.

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