CO2 Build up in your pain cave

Training
21

Mine is a basement room with no natural ventilation but with forced ventilation (no cooling) which is able to deliver/extract around 23l/sec - far exceeding the rate of gas exchange in my lungs. Since my previous post above I have used a dedicated room monitor to measure C02. It starts at around 500ppm which is to be expected (it’s what i get in a ground floor room with windows open) and then raises during a workout to around 1300-1400ppm at which point it seems to stabilise until the workout ends.

I have no issues with cooling that a fan can’t handle and humidity is also not really an issue. The CO2 level is not ideal - would definitely be considered unhealthy if was persistent background level, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem for the duration of the workout - which is to say I am not in anyway aware of it. By comparison I had to move my turbo into the garage for a couple of months last year and with doors open I had no issues with CO2 levels but I didn’t feel any different. As in my previous post above I did try and find what science might have to say but drew a blank so decided not to worry about it (I did find some reports suggesting that 1400ppm was often found in commercial gyms - which clearly is also not ideal).

22

As a guy who is an HVACR tech, I can totally see this as being a potential issue. Systems are designed around flushing CO2, and CO2 sensors are becoming more common.

But at home, I usually just workout outside, or with the fan in the window blowing air on me.

23

Recently I put an Airthings air quality sensor in my bedroom. My wife, me and our 2yr old all sleep in the same room. If the door was shut the CO2 level would get up to 3300ppm in a couple hours. The room is about 10’x 18’ with 9’+ ceilings. I could see working out in a small closed room for hours with no ventilation being an issue.

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24

Pretty interesting, I know my room gets pretty warm and the humidity goes up too. Does anybody happen to know if plants in your bedroom helps sleep or recovery?

Joe

25

Picked up a Aranet 4 monitor over the weekend not for the paincave specifically but of course I was going to test it…

This is from a 75 min ride in my paincave which is about 11x11 with 7ft ceilings, the door was open to my office (about same size) and the TV room, probably about 11x20 same ceilings height. There is another 11x20 unfinished space that I had the doors to closed (one off tv room one off paincave).

Initial green is from our bedroom (only me home/cleaning rest of house) and the bump is bringing it into the paincave. It went yellow (1000 ppm) almost immediately just from being in the room and went red (1500ppm) within 5 min of the ride starting. I did pause about 15 min from the end to fire up the pizza oven so that is the small dip a little before peak.

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Obviously this is less than ideal but what has me worried more is how long it took to clear since the TV room is in the basement. This is 2 hours after I finished the trainer ride and went up stairs, door to upstairs was closed (like it usually is) so basically good news basement is sealed well, bad news is also basement is sealed well.

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Will be looking into some wall mounted ERVs for the TV room and paincave apparently.

So now for why I actually bought it, testing the bedroom. It is ~13x16 with 8ft ceilings. We moved into this house in sept coming from a leaky non forced air 1850s house (this is 1960s). Like someone mentioned above 2 adults and a 2 year old, plus a dog. Since moving in none of us have slept well, I wake up to train early and way too frequently cannot find the energy/motivation to train just feel like garbage for an hour plus+ and run out of time to work out. We all just went through a nearly 2 month ordeal of sinus and ear infections, unresolved coughs etc. GF works from home, her mom stays with us to take care of the tot so the house is nearly always occupied.

We were not regretting the move, lead issues with the tot at the old house, the lack of sealing on a house that old was certainly not ideal for air quality and allergies so we were kind of shocked that we had been feeling worse in the new place. Windows are old (not 1850s but half are original), walls are 2x4, we weren’t expecting this to be so sealed up, which is good and bad as we are finding out since night time co2 was also an issue last night.

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One of the dips in the red is someone getting up and then leaving bathroom door open.

2 of the other dips are me getting up to let dog out.

Final peak and then drop is when I woke up and left the bedroom door open to see how fast the room cleared out. Much better than the basement but never goes green, was still 1100 (yellow) when I left the house around 1pm.

We discussed looking into an ERV system before we even moved in and just thinking about plans for the house. There is some sort of incentive through the power company/state to get a blower door audit, free as long as you make like 100 bucks in repairs recommended. Since sleep is the second most important thing to my GF (after our daughter) we’ll be looking into all this sooner than later. Monitoring door open tonight, the dog is ~15 so we like to keep her from roaming and causing damage to the third most important thing to my GF… our floors.

Any previous posters make changes to help/have suggestions?

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27

Does anybody have a good cheap co2 monitor they could recommend?

Joe

28

We’re getting an HRV too, for similar reasons. From an indoor air quality perspective I think an HRV or ERV (depending on your climate) is a good call.
A tangential thought I’ve had is it’s probably a good idea to shut it off if wild fire smoke comes into your area.
Kind of a no brainer but also easily over looked?

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29

Less important than the above but relevant - I’ve recently brought a few plants into my pain cave and they have grown noticeably faster than in other rooms

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30

The aranet 4 is about 170usd on amazon and one of the best rated ones on forums obsessed with monitors. There is a cheaper 120-140 inkbird? that is well rated and people have tested side by side with the aranet and it matches up.

the cheap ones have questionable sensors, the 170 for the aranet was a bit more than I wanted to spend but figured going cheap wasn’t worth it if i couldn’t trust it.

update on our bedroom testing the 27th was door closed windows closed didn’t tell anyone else I was testing. 28th is window cracked about an inch, I fell a sleep and GF cracked other window about an inch and bedroom door was left open. 29th (last night duh) we had both windows cracked again and door open. I wanted to get my gravel bike back together and you can see the bump around 1am when I finally got upstairs to shower and get to bed then it fell off again. So this was basically same conditions as the 28th but much much lower and green almost all night. Thinking it was a temp/pressure thing creating a better draw from the house.

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It is interesting to see it that it creeps up in the evening even before anyone goes upstairs, actually it starts after GF leaves her office and goes down stairs for the evening.

I did also feel better yesterday and this morning felt great, not at all groggy or feeling like I couldn’t get out of bed, despite getting to bed so late and according to garmin only getting 4.5 hours of sleep.

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31

I think cost and old school “houses should/do breathe” mentality are the big two here.

Even DIY I’m expecting to pay about 2500-3000 for a system that will do the first 2 levels. Plus if I do 2 through walls in the finished basement another grand with wiring.

We are in a zone that can go either way, will go ERV, and will not be tying it into existing HVAC at all. East coast so we have had issues in recent years with bad AQI from the Canadian fires that may mean we need to pay attention to at times and shut it down, the other 360 days a year hopefully we’ll see benefits.

Need to get up in the attic and finish “fixing” the insulation (went from gable to ridge vent) that previous owner jammed in the eaves. So will plan out ducting in a few weeks.

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32

It’s more than I wanted to pay too but I really want to know what is going on. Aranet 4 order placed! Thank you!

Joe

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33

Just to add to this discussion. I have a 8x12 shed that I have my trainer in. I too heard a podcast discussing the issue of co2 build up so I got a meter. I tried it for the first time this morning started at 400ppm and after 40 min of riding was 4000ppm with fan going. So it can go up fast depending on the space. I’m going to figure out some ventilation.

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34

I recently got a meter to see what the air quality was in the ‘phone booth’ meeting rooms my company has, and found the results interesting.
Even with the fan on low in these, CO2 buildup was not that high (don’t recall exact numbers.)
What I did find is that my home office is worse - often over 1000ppm with just me in there, I think likely because baseline for my house is 700ish. The house is new enough to not be drafty but old enough to not have fresh air exchange built into the HVAC.
The starting point may already be bad.

35

I was thinking ‘BS!! No way!’, but I can raise the temp in my pain room 2 to 4 degrees, which is pretty astounding. I also have a pulse-ox that I use occasionally (it’s kind of flaky, keeps under indicating my pulse, but my level doesn’t change very much over the time of a ride. Instant to instant there is a change but it’s a level that can change so it would be the trend, of any, over a ride that would be important. I had thought of actually creating a database of my ride pulse-ox telemetry, but that’s just too much squeeze for the juice generally.

An aside, the pulse-ox I have is from the company suing Apple over their implementation in their Apple Watches, and I’m not impressed. If Apple could do it better, they should be able to do it, IMO. Masimo has a fairly mature product, but it’s not perfect. :person_shrugging:

Addition: We had an ‘air-to-air’ exchanger put in when the house was built, and one would think that it would ‘fix’ the issue of ‘stale air’ in the house, but the system has its limits. One unit was replaced because of condensation that built up in it over the first few years of use. The mold was spread throughout the entire system necessitating that system and ducting replacement, and the entire A/C system replacement too. So, hysterically expensive for sure. We, as a result, very very infrequently use them but they are also not connected to each room. It was primarily installed for the bathrooms and kitchen area. It sounded like a great idea at the time of planning the house, but might reconsider if we had to do it all over again.

36

The temperature must be going up quite a bit too, so having a vent fan tied to a thermostat (or humidistat) would seem to work well…

37

plant produce carbon dioxide all day long as the breakdown sugars for metabolism, but in the day time they also do photosynthesis which uses carbon dioxide to produce sugars and oxygen. It is not going to change much in a room at night but it will not reduce the carbon dioxide content at night unless it has a source of light to promote photosynthesis. a brief description here: Is it true that plants release CO2 during night and that I should not have one in my room? | Culture Online - UCL – University College London

38

Hey, the forum is actually talking about something that relates to my job…

Just as a reference, most commercial building ventilation air design standards around the world set a required volume flowrate of fresh air (ventilation air from outside, not recirculated) for densely occupied spaces such as conference rooms, assembly spaces, auditoriums, etc. to maintain CO2 <1000ppm, although there is considerable debate about that number, and it depends on ambient CO2 levels as others have stated. Some standards write it in the form of “not more than 700ppm rise above ambient” , and many ambient areas see 400ppm, thus the 1000-1100ppm upper recommendation is pretty common.

Looking at this from that perspective, the right amount of fresh air to bring into your room is not an exact calculation, but if you are seeing levels rise considerably above 1000ppm for extended periods of time, its going to help to get some fresh air in the space, obviously.

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39

Since we’re talking about air quality, have people tested for Radon? I had thought of riding in the basement, and did a Radon test, and it was elevated. Not severely, but I didn’t feel it was worth the risk. There are ways of remediating it, but they can be expensive. Radon exposure is supposed to be one of the easiest preventable causes of lung cancer which is rather frightening. (I tested the first floor and it was way better) You can’t see it or smell it too, just test for it. Just thought I’d mention this as we go into indoor riding season. Your public health agency should have more info like if it’s common in the area.

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40

Thanks for the post and link, checking link out now.

Question on this is ambient outside? so for me that would be call it 450 I think as its been a little while since I put it outside Or would ambient be the space with no occupants for say X hours. Which I think we get to about 500 windows open and 600-700 with people home but not upstairs. Not a significant change in range but just curious.

Too cold for windows open now in the bedroom but we do keep our HVAC circulating at all times even if it isn’t heating or cooling and still leave the bedroom and office doors open. I haven’t paid enough attention lately to see if this is making a difference in peak or duration but the cost is minimal. ~40 bucks year to date so why not.

41

A popular car “youtuber” I subscribe to had an interesting off topic (for him) video he put out a while back that seems relevant to this topic. I’ve been meaning to rewatch it but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

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