I was curious about the levels of CO2 in my room so I went and bought a sensor for my bedroom. I was somewhat appalled when I woke up this morning with heavy eyelids to see the concentration at 1700 ppm.
Guess I have to leave my door open now.
Does your HVAC have a “circ” setting? On mine, it turns on the fan only (i.e. no climate control, just air movement) every 30 minutes.
In the event of a house fire, a closed bedroom door can truly save your life.
Oh huh, maybe I should install a cat door on my bedroom door. Though my landlord would probably not like that very much
Doors come off their hinges super easy with usually 6 phillips head screws. Remove the existing door, stash it, install whatever door you like with attached cat door. When you move out, reinstall the old door.
Did this for my home. Doors are all 100 years old, didn’t feel right cutting a hole for the cats, so bought a solid core door for the basement so they can go up and down as they please.
Isn’t it easier to just rubber mallet the 2-3 hinge bolts out?
Could be, depends on the door and the one you’re buying to replace it. When I did it I got a door without hinges on it for cheap and hung it off the existing hinges.
Sitting at a stop light on my motorcycle caused enough CO2 from my breath to build up inside my helmet that I became dizzy and had to pull aside and open my visor and breathe.
From what? Your own breathing?
I’ve been sneaking into OP’s home at night and opening up canisters of CO2 as a prank, they just haven’t noticed until now.
yeah. I think so, anyways.
Is your room really small? 1700 seems really high for just breathing. Unless the sensor is like right next to your mouth.
I have a somewhat small room. The sensor was mounted on an opposite wall so I’m not sure what could be causing this high reading besides me and my CPAP machine. I think it might be coming from the sump pump that’s a few floors below my room. I calibrated it last night outside and it set itself to ~400ppm. As I’m writing this the room has mostly settled back down to 770ppm. To be fair though, my room regularly does feel muggy and hard to concentrate in (less so with a door open), so I’m not entirely doubting this reading.
It seems about right to me. Fortunately just a little ventilation goes a long way. You really only need a little fresh air per person to keep levels low. You can go crazy with online calculators to determine an exact CFM number for a given number of people in a room of a certain size, or you can just experiment and watch the sensor.
deleted by creator
So you sleep between 2 and 10 am with no ventilation. RIP lungs.
What CO2 meter would you recommend, and is it open source, usable with different softwares beyond “only that from the manufacturer”?
I’d like to add that to my home automation, bit I’d need something that works open, not some closed source thing that can’t be used or mixed with anything wlse
I’ve seen recommendations for AirGradient. It’s fully open, AFAIU.
AirGradient just got added to the Works With Home Assistant programme. Looks pretty cool, though I haven’t used it.
If you get the DIY kit you assemble yourself, it’s a similar price to the one OP has.
From what I’ve heard, buying the components and fully assembling it should be about half the price of the kit.
Yeah it’s on the website linked from the blog post.
Indoor kit is $230USD or $138 for the DIY.
Outdoor kit is $225 or $125.
No, I don’t know why the outdoor kit is cheaper than the indoor one 🤷
The components look like they’d cost closer to $60 USD, but you’d need to print a PCB and create an enclosure.
My biggest question, for both the DIY and make it from scratch versions, is since they don’t get tested like the prebuilt, how do you know it’s measuring accurately?
The sensors are preassembled, so I assume the result would be the same. If there’s variation in the enclosure that changes the airflow, then yeah, that could cause differences.
I got a qingping monitor (with NDIR sensor) because of the price. It’s not open source though.
Here’s my personal recommendation. It’s currently 30% off for $175: https://aranet.com/en/home/products/aranet4-home
I’ve had it for at least a year now and it has been an incredible peace of mind. I live in an apartment, and I now make sure I have fans pulling in fresh air from outdoors at all times all year around so the CO2 doesn’t build up
Now we’re cooking with gas!
Do you have a fan to circulate air at all?
I went down the rabbit hole on this. Plants cannot help because it takes like 100 fast growing Palm trees to offset one person or something like that. Your only option is ventilation. I did this by installing a switch to the bathroom fan, which is connected to my room and expels the air outside, meaning it must pull in air from outside from some poorly sealed door or window somewhere. The switch I set to go during the hours my wife and dog and I are all sleeping in the room with the door closed and it solved the problem.
I’ve got a fan box that pulls air from the outside and puts it through a heat exchanger against air from the inside. Fresh, filtered air and about 90% energy recuperation. Condensate drips down on the pipes on the outside and finally I can sleep with a somewhat free nose during allergy season.
