Unventilated bedrooms

[bagofpucks]

Guess I should clarify. I’m not worried about air flow in general since the vents are right outside the bedrooms and we open up the windows regularly. My only concern is at night when the doors are closed and people are sleeping.

[Fuzz]

I think the only way to know is going to be getting a monitor. You may even be able to rent them from Home Depot, or Rogers Rent All.

[bagofpucks]

Yup, just will get a detector and see how it goes.

[You Need a Thneed]

Even if you had supply air from a furnace, at some times of year, the furnace wouldn’t run at all overnight.

That’s essentially the same situation.

Going forward, It would be beneficial to make sure there’s a 1” undercut on the doors, as mentioned above.

[DuffMan]

do you have a lot of kids or is this some sort of crack house, human trafficking etc. setup?

[troutman]

Plants can remove some CO2?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by troutman

Plants can remove some CO2?

Gotta be careful with those, some can make it worse.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Gotta be careful with those, some can make it worse.

Just don't smoke them.

[bagofpucks]

No human trafficking, preparing for kid number 2. Just a country bungalow style house, so only our bedroom is on the main floor, and everything else is in the developed basement. It’s a walkout style basement, so it does have nice big windows and the in floor heat is pretty nice.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by bagofpucks

It’s a walkout style basement,

I'm not sure I can consider walkouts, basements. Basements are subterranean on all sides, where I am from.

anyways, my concerns are dealt with.

[Jacks]

Got thinking of this thread this morning. Might be a good idea for everyone to open their door for 10 minutes while it's nice out. I hadn't opened mine for about a week.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

I'm not sure I can consider walkouts, basements. Basements are subterranean on all sides, where I am from.

anyways, my concerns are dealt with.

By building code, the first storey is above the average finished level grade. Basements are any level below that.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by bagofpucks

Guess I should clarify. I’m not worried about air flow in general since the vents are right outside the bedrooms and we open up the windows regularly. My only concern is at night when the doors are closed and people are sleeping.

If the CO2 detector still isn't giving you complete peace of mind, what I guess you could do to truly give you peace of mind is set up a smart plug with a small desk fan that won't disturb the individuals when they're sleeping? Have that fan angled to turn on intermittently to move air towards the bottom of the door.

This seems way overkill though and unnecessary, but for you, you may have a very different (and still valid) opinion. It's your house after all.

[bagofpucks]

Quick bump....received the CO2 detector today, so will do some playing around and monitoring. I have also been working out of the one basement bedroom, so timing could not have worked out better for testing. Looks like the target range is 400-1000 ppm and cause for concern is over 1500 ppm. I’ve been working for about 2 hours in the room with the door closed and it went from about 800 to 1100, but seems to have stopped there. With the weather, the furnace or in floor heat hasn’t kicked on all day, so this should be about as stale of air as we’ll get.

[jwslam]

Hmm... According to Alberta OH&S (page 408/555)
http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/OHS/OHSCode.pdf

You are OK to sit in a 5000ppm of CO2 environment for 8 hours.

[bagofpucks]

Yes, that has been the frustrating part of all of this. There are guidelines that say to keep it under 1000-2000 ppms and that you can start getting headaches at 1000 ppms. Then I found another study that said anything under 1500 ppms is fine and no concern.

[bagofpucks]

Experiment continues...

Funny enough, I set up the monitor in our bedroom that is “ventilated” and the readings are higher than the bedrooms in the basement. So, at this point I will continue monitoring the rooms for curiosity sake, but I think most folks in this thread were correct and it is not an issue at all, unless you have a heat source without a vent.

[Mass_nerder]

I'm pretty sure the gap under the doors should be enough to provide the necessary air changes.
Most apartments that rely on baseboard radiant heating don't have fresh air intakes for each individual unit; just in the common areas (the hallways etc), and that's enough to meet the required air changes. I can't see why it would be any different in a bedroom.