Brewing indoors

[Cheers]

At this point I brew in my garage. Clean up is easier and the wife does not "complain" about the smell. (I know, I know whats to complain about) Anyway, my questions is this, does propane burn clean enough that I can use my turkey fryer burner indoors without killing myself with gas fumes. I also have a dog and a 13 week old baby that I have to worry about. While trying to find this info, I thought to myself, if anyone would know, these guys would. Thanks for your help.

[Gravity Thrills]

No sir, you will probably kill yourself if you use an outdoor cooker in the garage. There are low BTU burners designed for indoor use, but even these are supposed to have a resteraunt-style ventilation hood installed overhead to keep carbon monoxide from building up.

Carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless, tasteless, etc., and you would succumb before you even knew what was happening. A week or so ago, there was an awful news story about a mother who killed herself using the old car-running-in-a-closed- garage method. Unfortunately, not only did she succeed, her teenage son was also killed when he found her in the garage and tried to pull her out of the car. The carbon monoxide levels in the garage were off the chart, and the kid was probably a goner with the first couple of breaths he took.

Brew Safe
Jim

[andytv]

Jim,

I asked this same question several months ago, and was a little disturbed to find that no-one seemed to think it too bad an idea to run a turkey cooker inside a garage or basement. I know that incomplete combustion produces a ton of CO, so I never tried it. I guess the good question becomes; How do I rig a power vent in my garage??

Thanks for your "on the mark" response.

Andy

[Gravity Thrills]

Andy, there was this passing mention in the Nov2001 BYO:

"It is illegal for any manufacturer to make an unvented burner over 5,000 BTU for indoor use... [to use indoor] you need to vent all exhaust gases through a properly designed hood or build a combustion chamber around your burner and vent all gases through a flue." Sounds like quite a summer project!

Cheers,
Jim

[bredmakr]

In the same issue of Brew Your Own magazine there is a total electric RIMS system featured. CHECK IT OUT!

[Azorean Brewer]

Providing you leave the garage door open ? I brew in the garage and leave the overhead door and the back door opened. Does anyone see a problem with this ? Other than it getting chilly with winter coming on ... Thanks for the advice, I guess I never thought about the residual unburnt fuel, but then again I never use my turkey burner indoors just in the garage with cross ventilation ...

Paul.

[Gravity Thrills]

The manufacturer's instructions from your burner will tell you no - they recommend that a high output burner not even be used with an overhead obstruction like a car port or canopy because of the possibility of CO build-up.

I BBQ in a breezy corner of a screened porch, but I use charcoal and not preassurized high output fuel and use only a small patio grill. This is about all I would be comfortable doing, and my porch probably gets more cross-ventilation than a garage.

If you want to be sure, get a CO detector or a combination CO/unburned fuel detector for your garage. According to an informative site, www.CODetectorstore.com, prices of CO alarms that meet the newest standards vary from about $35 to $60 and have useful lives of 3 to 6 years. So if you want to be sure, pick up one of these dealies. Note that CO is not the result of unburned fuel, it is the result of incompletely burned fuel (the result of accumulated unburned fuel is explosion - also a sure way to ruin your brew day).

I'm not the mother hen type, and everyone makes their own decisions on this stuff. But long-term exposure to as little as 9ppm CO can cause damage. 50ppm is the legal safe limit for workplaces, and >100ppm is dangerous. Because CO outcompetes O2 for hemoglobin binding sites on red blood cells it basically oxygen starves the brain and shuts down oxidative metabolism. Of the 10,000 people each year that are CO poisoned in the US, about 10% die. Many of the rest suffer from brain damage, sometimes irreversible.

If you have ever gotten dizzy or got a headache from brewing in the garage, you can be sure you are taking in too much CO.

Brew Safe
Jim

[Cheers]

I appreciate your quick response. That was kind of what I thought the answer would be. Sure am glad I asked! Thanks again.