You are kidding right?

 

Darwin award nominee right here...

 

Not only that, but if said garage is attached to the house, even if all of the doors are closed, you are highly likely to introduce dangerous levels of CO2 into the home.

 

Didn't you ever hear that saying that there's no such thing as a stupid question? Anyway, I've already reproduced, so I'm beyond the reach of the forces of natural selection.

After a little googling, it appears that what I've actually been doing, opening the garage door before remote-starting the engine, also isn't safe. From the Iowa State U site:

"Is it safe to briefly warm up a car in an open garage? No. In an Iowa State study, warming up a vehicle for only two minutes with the overhead door open raised CO concentrations in the garage to 500 ppm. Ten hours after the car had been backed out of the garage, there was still a measurable concentration of CO in the garage. Persons working in the garage for a long period of time would breath a dangerous amount of carbon monoxide."

That's bad news as we head into winter. My other car, a Honda Clarity PHEV, can pre-heat without turning on the ICE, drawing power from the 40-amp charger or, if not connected, from its traction battery. A plug-in RDX would be nice, for lots of reasons.

 

Why fuss with preheating; just turn the damn thing on, fasten your seat belt, and drive.

 

Another reason to keep your phone secure with fingerprint bio-metrics. A six year old can't start the car playing around with Acuralink in the phone.

 

On a modern vehicle that is running properly, the short answer is "no". However, I shouldn't have to point out how incredibly stupid it would be to test that theory.

That quote comes from an Iowa State University Agricultural Engineering Note that is two decades old. AEN's are informal publications. AEN-207 references some Iowa State study, but does not give a citation for it. Without the text of that study, we don't know which vehicle(s) were used for testing (they could have a used a poorly-tuned 1973 Cadillac with no catalytic converter for all we know).

Modern engines produce extremely low levels of CO - most of what comes out of the tailpipe at idle and part-throttle is CO2 and water vapor. CO will poison you quickly. CO2, on the other hand, is what we exhale. The danger with too much CO2 is displacing oxygen causing asphyxiation - not poisoning. An internal combustion engine would begin to misfire and stall once oxygen levels get too low for complete combustion at which point further consumption of O2 and poisonous emissions would stop. As this relates to factory remote start systems, if the "check engine" light comes on during a remote start such as would occur if oxygen levels got too low and the ECU could no longer maintain the proper air-to-fuel ratio or the engine began misfiring, the remote start would be terminated. I highly suspect someone trying to commit suicide by idling a modern vehicle in an enclosed garage would probably become frustrated and give up long before they were successful.

 

this

 

 

This is what I do, I check the weather on my iPhone and when cold temps are predicted I turn on a small heater in the garage the night before. When I leave for work at 0400 the car and garage are both toasty warm. The car is already warm and no deadly CO2 build up. Everyone lives!!

 

Hell, for a 2.9 mile commute I'd either walk or run, regardless of how cold it is.

 

 

I asked my wife to check that question out. She went out to the garage about two hours ago and hasn't returned. Should I be concerned?

 

"I've already reproduced, so I'm beyond the reach of the forces of natural selection."

Not if you kill your family. Entire families HAVE been killed by CO poisoning. Common sources include malfunctioning heaters in RVs or camper trailers, malfunctioning furnaces, and smoldering fires. But I know of a case locally where it was a car idling in a garage. Sadly, in that case it may have been a deliberate act.

This is potentially an increased hazard with modern tightly sealed homes, because they don't have a steady fresh air breeze flowing through them like older homes.

Carbon monoxide is damn sneaky. Don't mess with it. Make sure you have functioning CO detectors in your home, but don't expect them to save you from deliberate stupidity.

End sermon. Be safe out there.

 

That may be true but they still produce enough that when my wife starts her car in the attached garage then runs back in to get something she forgot there's enough CO entering the house to set off a detector 2 rooms away from the garage door. Good news is the detector scares the hell out of her so she doesn't do it very often.

 

I use a small electric heater with a built in fan and tip over protection to circulate the heat in the garage really cold days. Haven't used a gas furnace since I was little.

 

In other words.. still a bad idea

 

I don't run my car in the garage AT ALL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. By using a small electric heater it keeps the space comfy. The only time I have used my remote start is when I have been in a store for a while and I'm on my way out to the car. I have known about the dangers of CO2 for a while now. I was taught the right way by my Mom. Now I hope that makes it clear enough.

 

I put my pond fish in a big tub in the garage a few years ago during the winter. Bare in mind I did this many times in the past but I did something different this time around. I had my RDX in the garage and would start it with the big door open of course. Well my fish all died over the course of 2 weeks that year and I couldn't for the hell of me figure out why. I realized after it was because of starting the car in the garage. Pleass don't do it, even with the door open. Not worth it.

 

That is credible. Although fish don't "breathe air" they depend upon oxygen for aerobic metabolism, and they transport the oxygen from their gills to their tissues with hemoglobin contained within red blood cells, just as we do. The main problem with carbon monoxide is that it binds to hemoglobin with much higher affinity than oxygen. This progressively reduces the number of molecules of hemoglobin that are available to carry oxygen, in a dose and time dependent manner. ( CO has other mechanisms of toxicity, but they are highly technical. )

CO can be displaced from hemoglobin by oxygen, but it is a relatively slow process. It's like trying to move a bowling ball with a BB gun. It takes a whole lot of BBs and it doesn't happen very fast. Unfortunately, by the time symptoms of CO poisoning manifest, the victim is already in dire straits. Prompt removal from exposure to CO is essential. Administration of pure oxygen is the primary treatment, possibly in a hyperbaric chamber.

BTW, although carbon dioxide ( CO2 ) is less toxic than carbon monoxide ( CO ), CO2 is NOT inert. CO2 is a component of the primary system that maintains the pH in our bodies, the CO2/bicarbonate buffer system. ( CO2 combines with water to form carbonic acid ). In high doses, CO2 causes a rapid drop in serum pH and severe, potentially fatal, compromise. This is independent of available oxygen. As an illustration of this, you may recall from the movie Apollo 13 ( or if you have an especially long memory, from the live televised newsfeed of the calamity ) that a major concern wasn't that the astronauts would run out of oxygen before they got back to earth, it was that the carbon dioxide scrubbers weren't keeping up because the lunar module wasn't designed to host three astronauts.

And yes, biochemistry and medicine are within my professional expertise. ( Or were; I'm retired ). Now let's get back to talking about cars. Safely.

 

Love it.

 

Alright, let me start by saying remote start in a car in a closed garage is a VERY BAD IDEA.

From my Chemical Engineering background:
Basically, what happens in a car engine is you create two different main reactions:
Hydrocarbon + Oxygen -> CO2 + H2O (Complete combustion. This is the main reaction in a car engine)
Hydrocarbon + Oxygen -> CO + H2O (Incomplete combustion. This is a side reaction which, in modern engines, is minimized)

Now, in most engines today, you're going to get mostly CO2. That's an asphyxiant, which is bad. Now, if you're not in the car in the garage with the door closed, that's not the biggest deal.

What will kill you, particularly if your car is in a garage attached to your house, is the CO from the incomplete reaction. If you inhale CO2, your body doesn't do anything with it. If you inhale CO, your hemoglobin process actually has a higher affinity for Carbon Monoxide than it does for Oxygen. As a result, your blood fails to distribute oxygen and it kills you.

From what I have read, it's unlikely that running the engine in your closed garage on accident will kill you, but DO NOT RISK IT. My mother in law's first fiance died of CO poisoning in his house and had no idea it was happening.

 

While the fish do not breathe oxygen like we do, there was a filter on the back of the tank agitating the surface for gas exchange and I'm guessing too high of a concentration of CO built up in the water killing the fish.

I took a few organic chemistry and bio chemistry courses, my Major is Biology. I just wanted to say your explanation on the mechanisms of CO vs 02 and Co2 is spot on.

 

Lol

 

 

 

 

 

Moderator's note; thread has ran it's course.