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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Keeping an eye on CO2 is really interesting. I recently moved from an apartment with an electric range to one with a gas range, and CO2 gets as high as 3000ppm when I'm cooking (compared to a baseline of around 700 or 800). I don't know what the effects of this are, but the monitor reminds me to ventilate during and after cooking.

(I have my Airthings monitor bridged to HomeKit with Home Assistant and it seems severe enough for Apple to send a notification to my phone about it, by default. So I open windows and am happy to be able to notice air quality issues that most people will miss. I did turn off the notification though, I know I'm cooking ;)

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Are you sure you have a CO2 monitor and not an eCO2 monitor?

A lot of cheaper CO2 sensors really detect VOCs and try to estimate CO2 from that.

I have this: https://www.airthings.com/view-plus

It ain't cheap.

Well price is no guarantee. Try the hand sanitiser test I detailed above.

The CO2 sensor in the View Plus id advertised as follows:

NDIR Sensor (Non-Dispersive Infra-Red): Measurement range 400–5000 ppm Optimum Accuracy ±50ppm ±3% within 10 – 35°C / 50 - 95°F and 0 – 80%RH after initial calibration time

Can you tell from that description whether it's a true CO2 sensor?

That's proper CO2 sensor then. The cheap ones are estimating CO2 levels from VOC levels.

Second this. It's possible that the 3000 reading is triggered by something else. They should try rubbing sanitiser on their hands and then holding the device - if it goes crazy then it's not directly sensing CO2.

I sort of did this test last night. I assume that VOCs include ethanol, so I mixed up some drinks near the monitor. VOCs went from ~60ppb to a peak of 579ppb. CO2 remained constant at about 640ppm.

I am less surprised than other people that making an open fire indoors increases CO2 levels. Where do the combustion byproducts go if not into the air.

Do you have a rangehood fan that vents outside?

You should never cook without one, even electric, but especially with gas.

If you do have one sounds like it isn’t working very well. Maybe not enough make up air coming in, it’s blocked? Not sure.

I don't think my fan vents outside, but I haven't really tested it extensively. I haven't ever seen an apartment in NYC whose range fan vents outside, but maybe I've just been unlucky.

> You should never cook without one

It's probably one of the least important thing you can act on in your day to day life when it comes to health tbh

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