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One of the things that hasn't been brought up before is make up air for the spray booth. This is very important if you have other things like a boiler, water heater, clothes dryer, fire place, even fart fans in the bathroom drawing air from the same space without dedicated combustion air being fed to them. What can happen is the area will develop a negative pressure and start pulling air in from the chimney or flue piping. If you are firing propane or natural gas, you may not realize you have a problem until it's too late. Gas fires tend to make a lot of carbon monoxide when they are being starved of air, and under those conditions may be dumping it directly into your house. Oil fired appliances usually give off some warning signs before you get into real trouble (oil smoke odor), but will you notice it while you're spraying?
Most of the carbon monoxide deaths are caused by situations where the appliances were starved of air and the chimney / vent pipe became the path of least resistance for the make up / combustion air causing the appliance to dump the flue gasses directly into the house. Lots of times gas appliances have a roll out switch or an oxygen depletion switch that should cut the appliance out if it happens, but don't bet your life on it, and older units may not have it.
You've got to have as much or more air coming into the house as you have going out. This can be a problem with a new house or a remodeled one. All the insulation, weather strip, new windows etc. are made to prevent air flow.
Please
1. If you don't have a CO detector, get one. Today.
2. Have your appliances serviced. Make sure everything that can draw air from the house is running, exhaust fans in the bath and kitchen, whole house fan, all fuel burning appliances - stove, oven, fire place, water heater, furnace or boiler, space heaters and your exhaust from the spray booth. Then make sure the service guy checks the draft on the chimney or flue and the appliances, as well as checking the flame for appearance and combustion gas. You may be OK, or you may need to add some fresh air ducts, but have it checked.
It takes surprising little CO to cause problems. Don't mess around with it!
Hope this helps out. I don't want to scare anyone, but I don't want to read about any of you guys in the obituary section of the paper either. Almost all of the accidental CO deaths were preventable if someone had checked the systems under a worst case situation (everything running).
Adam
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