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Comment by nevi-me | Hacker News Reader

That CO2 concentration looks unhealthy, I wonder to what extent it's affecting your sleep quality (as opposed to waking you up).

> Measure before you fix

In my case, I got a few IKEA CO2 sensors, and after leaving them in the bedrooms for a few days, we found that leaving an outside window slightly open + the bedroom door open, kept the CO2 levels below 600PPM at night.

We're 1000ft/300m away from a motorway, but fortunately the noise pollution isn't bad. So ventilating (even as it's getting cold) turned out to be a simple fix. I hadn't thought of collecting sleep data from our devices, but maybe I'll get an AI to do that, so I can correlate our sleep quality with the environment.

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The levels I have at night indeed are unhealthy, I’m still trying to find the best way to tackle this challenge..

Most wakeups are from noise (I can see it in the data) but high CO2 levels can also make me a lighter sleeper.

Not sure where you’re based but in Europe the priority is mostly on heat isolation, so air movement suffers. The US is better in that regard. There was a big thread on that topic on X the other week (Peter the indie hacker initiated it and there were some good recommendations in case you’re the owner of the flat)

https://archive.ph/dd5Kl

“Almost 2%. The reduction in carbon-dioxide concentration when 60 square centimetres of plants were placed in an office, according to one study.”

Is your bedroom approaching 4 or 5k PPM? The chart screen shotted was at 3300+ and it looks like it kept going up after. Hopefully it's a bad sensor reading, but that is very high. I sleep in a small room with a few people and it's maybe 1500 and noticeable when that happens. Getting to 5k is potentially dangerous for extended periods of time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Below_1%

Hi, Co2 levels like that are severely high and will cause you to have a lot of issues. I had some issues with poor ventilation and headaches in my apartment, and my solution was to run the bathroom fan all the time - this gave me enough ventilation to feel much better. You're basically suffocating at 3000 ppm.

It's important to measure this somehow - I do this with a $100 Co2 sensor and display I got off amazon, but you seem to already have these sensors available.

Plants can help somewhat.

They can't, it's a myth. It's not enough plants, but also, they actually release CO2 at night.

Oh duh, thanks for the reminder.

I also agree co2 levels are super important, but I’m wondering: in your situation isn’t air pollution from the motorway a concern? Not sure how to balance that one

3k+ is well into the headache / feel really bad range

we rarely get over 1k here

I was a bit surprised at the level of those readings.

Anecdotally, we have an air monitor gadget and the highest I've ever seen (small home office, fairly well-sealed, winter, me working there all day with no ventilation) was around 1100-1200 PPM. I get that two people in a small sealed bedroom could push it higher, but 3350 PPM?!

yeah... the problem is that his vibecoded dashboard or sensor readings are buggy

plants plants plants. Most of these are dummy easy to care for, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study#List_of_p...

Plants are nice…but, from your link:

“These results are not applicable to typical buildings, where outdoor-to-indoor air exchange already removes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at a rate that could only be matched by the placement of 10–1000 plants/m2 of a building's floor space.[2]

The results also failed to replicate in future studies”

You could use air scrubbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_lime

You’d need a forest in your room to see a proper change. There was a whole discussion in the Indie hacking scene on X on that topic around 1-2 weeks ago

Big fan of plants though, help me feel calm

Plants release CO2 at night, though. Not much, but they certainly won't help to remove it unless they are photosynthesising.

Everyone gets unhealthy CO2 levels if the bedroom doesn't have air extraction inside or you don't leave the door opened.

Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things tho ? I have a captor at home, even when I leave the door opened and CO2 remains low, I don't notice anything different at wakeup.

It can be the difference between between feeling like you're suffocating, not getting enough oxygen to rest enough/sleep well.

I notice a difference if I move between a ventilated room vs congested one. I suppose it depends on what's causing the concentration. If it's human breath, I'll smell freshness. If it's e.g. burning a portable gas heater (common in my part of the world), I'll feel like I'm not inhaling smoke (probably small amounts of CO).

A few years ago, I would sometimes wake up at night and open a window wide, or go open the outside door and stand there for 5-10 minutes.

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