Spring Break is now and high season is right around the corner… For a hotel or resort, a pool heater can contribute to the year’s biggest source of revenue. A hotel carbon monoxide leak – on the other hand – could be the end of your business.
Our hearts go out to the family who lost their 13-year-old son this past weekend in Niles, Michigan when the hotel’s indoor pool heater leaked carbon monoxide into a birthday party. Seven middle schoolers were found unconscious on the deck of the hotel’s indoor pool. Four police officers were also poisoned trying to clear out the area and get oxygen to the kids.
Unfortunately for one of the children, carbon monoxide cost his life – along with evacuation and hotel closure for an unannounced period of time during investigation.
This should never happen.
Even though the pool was built at a time before hotel pool carbon monoxide detectors were required, the broken pool heater was leaking 16 times above the legal limit of carbon monoxide! That’s 800 PPM (parts per million), when U.S. standards for carbon monoxide are only 35 PPM for one hour of exposure.
Whether your resort or hotel pool heater venting was designed 50 years ago, or 5 months ago, check your systems’ safety features frequently. Depending on the type of water heater, you should have spill switches and/or blocked flue switches in place. Ask your local maintenance company for advice.
If you aren’t sure, call an ENERVEX local representative. They specialize in multi-story exhaust systems for boilers and water heaters that ensure a precise ratio of fuel to air for proper combustion in a safe and sustainable way. These high-efficiency exhaust solutions have numerous safety feature options and use fully modulating technology to optimize the heating appliance’s exhaust rate and emissions, even when you have multiple heating appliances exhausting through a common flue.
Not only do ENERVEX exhaust systems keep deadly carbon monoxide away, but can also reduce the building owner’s fuel costs by as much as 10 percent.