Generators and raft ups

[Ericinmich]

Lots of people die from malfunctioning oil fired heating units too. If you are sleeping the smell may not be obvious. But I am not telling you what to do. We are responsible for ourselves. I just don't think it is good to promote a diesel generator as safer.

I reread your 1st post and realized I read it wrong. I thought you were asking why they were safer... which I tried to answer. You are correct, no gennys is completely safe from causing CO posioning.

 

[ttmott]

CO is odorless. Diesel actually has a higher carbon content. I would not treat either any different or either as safer. Neither is safe. CO is a cumulative gas in your lungs.

Carbon Monoxide is a product of incomplete combustion. Between gasoline and diesel fuels, spark ignition internal combustion has the highest unburned products where compression ignition has the lowest. A properly running diesel engine produces over 40 percent less un-combusted fuel than a properly running gasoline engine. Even the newer catalytic converter marine engines are significantly higher in CO than a diesel engine.
Most of the carbon content you are referencing is a soot byproduct which is particulate and not significantly CO or CO2 gas.
Even though, any combustion process produces CO and that is hazardous. I replaced all of the CO monitors in the boat a couple of years ago and they get tested every year. This is a "no-brainer", raft up or not.

It's been quite a few years but there was a number of boats tied together and children were playing around in tubes and floats. Several of the children succumbed to CO poisoning just floating near the boats. The adults didn't know for hours.... It was bad.

 

[mrsrobinson]

I learned something new about diesel, thanks for the comments.

 

[Alex F]

This is always an important item when in a larger raft when stern anchors are deployed. If the wind is coming from the bow, we'd be ok running gas generators. However, as soon as the wind is from either side or behind us, gas gennies MUST be off. This will also apply in situations when there's no wind.

To provide everyone comfortable night, diesel boats would share their power by letting gas boats plug in to the diesel boats. Larger diesel boats with 220VAC usually have no load issues. However, for those with only 110VAC, would need to exercise power management.

Properly functional CO detectors are a must. I always had extra set of portable CO detectors (with digital display) in every room, in addition to built in ones.

All doable safely if you plan it in advance and have necessary adapters. I always have couple of 30Amp/20amp power adapters.

You don't need to wait for a night time to test the theory. A quick example, we came back from shore excursion as a group. Everyone who had their gennies off, fired them up to recharge the batteries and cool off the "house". It was a beautiful and very calm evening. 10 min later my CO detectors started going off, when the salon door was getting open and closed few times, while the crew was getting ready for dinner. It was clear that a gas boat (if I recall it was not rafted right next to me, but one boat over) had to shut his genny and plug in to a diesel boat.

 

[Alex F]

My biggest complaint about the 500 design. Why would they put the exhaust port right next to the swim ladder? We keep it on if we are cooking lunch or my wife wants the AC on (which is almost always) I do turn it off for swimming. We also warn friends we keep it on, as do most we raft with. We have no air flow in the bunk room or the mid cabin (windows don't open) without the genny running at night.

500DB is not the only model with this issue. 420DBs have the same setup, where both the ladder and genny exhaust are on the STBD side. I don't usually turn off the genny whole we're swimming, but I just keep an eye and alert anyone who's not aware. It's not an issue if you stay a bit away and not hang right by the ladder.

Good reminder about the management of portholes. Need to be very careful in a raft with gennies running, when the wind is not coming from the bow.