November 16, 1998

To:Urban Environment and Development Committee

From:Fire Chief Alan F. Speed

Subject:Review of Requested Amendments to By-Law 60-1998

- "The Carbon Monoxide Detector By-Law"

Purpose:To evaluate amendments to the above by-law that have been proposed by the Greater Toronto Apartment Association (GTAA), and to propose other amendments that are considered to be necessary.

Funding Sources, Financial Implications and Impact Statement:

There are no funding requirements associated with this report.

The financial implications to the City of adoption of the amendments to the By-Law that are proposed in this report are nil. The financial impact on the members of the GTAA of complying with the By-Law will be significantly reduced since the number of carbon monoxide detectors required in multi-unit residential buildings by the amended By-Law will be greatly reduced.

Adoption of the proposed amendments to the By-Law will make compliance with the By-Law far less onerous to the members of the GTAA while providing no reduction in the level of protection provided to the citizens of Toronto from the hazards of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning.

Recommendations:

It is recommended that the following proposed amendments to the Carbon Monoxide Detector By-Law (By-Law 60-1998) be received by Council for consideration.

Multi-unit residential buildings should be exempted from the requirements for carbon monoxide (CO) alarms with the following exceptions:

1.Multi-unit residential buildings with common fuel-fired forced air heating systems - all dwelling units within such buildings that are heated by a common fuel-fired central system should be required to have CO alarms.

2.Multi-unit residential buildings with fuel-fired appliances in some or all of the suites - all dwelling units within such buildings that have any fuel-fired fireplaces, ranges, heating equipment, etc. should be required to have CO alarms.

3.Multi-unit residential buildings where fuel-fired appliance rooms share common walls with dwelling units or are located directly above or below dwelling units, such dwelling units should be required to have CO alarms.

4.Multi-unit residential buildings with attached garages - dwelling units sharing common walls with garages or that are located directly above garages should be required to have CO alarms.

5.Multi-unit residential buildings with fuel-fired appliance in rooms that are part of the building should have carbon monoxide alarms located in the room containing the fuel-fired appliance. The alarm should be connected in such a way that building supervisory staff are notified when the alarm is actuated.

6.Maintenance requirements for all fuel-fired equipment (heating, cooking, etc.) should be made a part of the By-Law requirements. Appropriate maintenance standards as recommended by the Technical Standards and Safety Authority should be referenced in the By-Law.

7.In the ADefinitions@ section, the term ABoarding or Lodging House@ should be revised to read ABoarding, Lodging or Rooming House@ to match the terminology used in both the Fire and Building Codes.

8.In the definition of ABoarding or Lodging House@, the criteria that determines whether a particular building is affected should be changed. The phrase Afor gain@ should be changed to the Fire Code criteria Ain return for remuneration or the provision of services or both@.

9.The term Aelectrically powered@ in the definition of ACarbon Monoxide Detector@ should be changed. A phrase such as Aconnected to the primary electrical supply for the building@ is more accurate.

10.The term Amultiple occupancies@ in Item 4 should be changed to Amultiple dwelling units@.

Council Reference/Background/History:

The GTAA submitted an "engineering report" on October 19, 1998, in response to discussions with Mr. Yaman Uzumeri, P.Eng., Executive Director/Chief Building Official - Building Department. The "engineering report" proposes several amendments to By-Law 60-1998 "The Carbon Monoxide Detector By-Law" that reflect the GTAA's concerns that the By-Law imposes requirements on their members that they feel are unwarranted due to "all the existing life safety regulations already governing apartments".

The position of the GTAA is that By-Law 60-1998 should not apply to apartment buildings.

Comments and/or Discussion and/or Justification:

11.Analysis of GTAA AEngineering Report@ by Nadine International:

The Aengineering report@ submitted by the GTAA contains recommended amendments to By-Law 60-1998 that are not adequately supported by the information in the report:

12.The Introduction states that Nadine reviewed 88,000 documents on the Internet regarding carbon monoxide. This is highly unlikely, especially on the basis of the samples of the Asupporting@ documentation from the Internet and Ontario Coroner=s office that are included in Appendix B of Nadine=s report (see below)

13.The results of the Internet document review were not provided in detail. That is, recommendations for By-Law amendments have been made without specific reference to which Internet document supported the proposed amendment (see below).

14.The ACOMMENTS/DISCUSSION/JUSTIFICATION@ section contains unsupported claims, misleading statements, omissions and contradictions:

15.Paragraph 3 states that CO is lethal at concentrations of 400 parts per million (ppm) in 1-2 hours. Paragraph 4 then states that Afor death to occur... about 12800 ppm... must be sustained or exceeded for 1-3 minutes@. The next paragraph infers that it is only the extremely high concentration, short duration exposures that must be protected against. This is clearly misleading.

If 400 ppm of CO are present during the night, then those levels will be just as lethal as the high concentration for a short time period. Even very low CO levels (much less than 400 ppm) are a hazard to the elderly and the very young, as well as others with common health problems.

II.AExtremely poor ventilation@ is not necessarily required to allow dangerous concentrations of CO to accumulate. The amount of CO that the source is producing also plays a critical role. A furnace that is churning out huge amounts of CO may still create hazardous CO levels even in a fairly well-ventilated building.

No supporting documentation is provided that indicates that dwelling units in apartment buildings are any better ventilated than single family dwellings (SFDs).

III.Fire rated assemblies are not gas-tight assemblies. The condition of the rated assemblies in the fuel-fired appliance rooms of existing apartments is almost without exception poor. Experience from residential Retrofit and regular inspectors confirm that the vast majority of fuel-fired appliance room fire separations have been breached to some degree. Any breach regardless of size renders a fire separation non-gas-tight.

IV.The reference to fire separations is repetition of the point about rated assemblies. They are synonymous terms. (See comments above).

1.The report does not elaborate on how Alife safety requirements@ mitigates the risk of CO accumulation in multi-unit residential buildings. That is, which Alife safety requirements@ are being referred to and exactly how do they reduce the CO accumulation risk?

VI.Stack effect ventilation may worsen a CO problem depending on building characteristics and weather conditions. Stack effect dictates that on a cold day, the neutral plane may be low enough that CO would be drawn out of a fuel-fired appliance room and actually blown into all spaces above that level, including every dwelling unit.

VII.The report states that the 1993 NFPA CO report is the only one available in North America, Europe and Asia that provides CO death statistics. While this is hard to believe, insufficient time was available to search and find other CO death statistics.

VIII.The 1993 NFPA report is not included in the report=s appendices so that it could be verified that the conclusions drawn were accurate. No reliable bibliographic reference was given for this report.

IX.The statistics provided at the top of page 5 state that 60% of CO deaths are vehicle-related. Since these are more than likely vehicles in attached garages, that indicates that any dwelling units that have an attached garage are at risk of dangerous CO accumulation.

1.The statistics provided at the top of page 5 state that 60% of CO deaths are vehicle-related are contradicted by the statement further down on page 5 that AThe most frequent contributors of CO production are fireplaces, gas water heaters, wood stoves, space and portable heaters (non-electric)@.

This paragraph also goes on to state that CO alarms should be provided where any of these devices are located, but no recommended By-Law amendment is made to address these hazards that may be present in some dwelling units in multi-unit residential buildings.

XI.The comments regarding Abackground@ CO conditions are a red herring. They have nothing to do with whether the risk of CO accumulation in dwelling units in multi-unit residential buildings is high enough to warrant mandating CO alarms in such dwelling units.

XII.The arguments regarding false alarms and evacuations of multi-unit residential buildings also has nothing to do with the risk of CO accumulation in such buildings. The issue there is whether the manufacturing standards that govern when CO alarms sound require amendment. Also, the criteria under which evacuation is mandatory requires review. THAT is why the Chicago CO alarm by-law is allegedly being amended (no evidence that the proposed amendments have been adopted has been provided).

No data regarding background CO levels in Toronto have been provided.

1.Appendix B of the "engineering report" is stated to contain documents supporting the GTAA's proposed amendments. A review of the information in Appendix B yielded the following:

1.There are approximately fifty documents in the Appendix comprising about 300 pages. Approximately 30% of the documents provide general information about CO that do not address or support the By-Law amendments proposed by the GTAA submission.

2.Approximately 100 pages of the Appendix are Coroner's Inquest reports that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue of accidental CO poisoning from non-fire sources. They deal with three fires in which a total of eight people died. CO poisoning was determined as the cause of the deaths, which is the case in a large percentage of fatal fires.

3.Approximately 30% of the documents mention CO, but are not in any way pertinent to the proposed By-Law amendments.

4.Four documents are pertinent. They include three copies of the amendments to the City of Chicago CO by-law. Some aspects of these amendments have been considered in the proposed amendments to the City of Toronto By-Law 60-1998. The other document is an article from an apartment trade publication that contains numerous false and misleading statements.

5.The justification for the proposed amendments are as follows (numbered in accordance with the list provided in the ARecommendations@ section above):

1A.A multi-unit residential building that has a single common forced air, fuel-fired heating system is no different than a single family dwelling in terms of the risk of CO poisoning. A faulty fuel-fired appliance or ventilation system can provide sufficient CO through the duct system identical to that found in a single family dwelling to injure or kill the occupants. Many of these types of buildings are not any larger than some three storey single family dwellings to which the By-Law already applies. Accordingly, all dwelling units in such multi-unit residential buildings should be required to be protected by CO detectors.

1B.Since in-suite fuel-fired appliances have been shown to be a major sources of CO that pose a threat to apartment occupants, all dwelling units with any type of in-suite fuel-fired appliance should be protected by CO detectors.

1C.The room in which a fuel-fired appliance is located in a multi-unit residential building must be gas-tight, otherwise CO from a faulty fuel-fired appliance or ventilation system will infiltrate adjacent apartments in exactly the same way it would in a single family dwelling. This is because the CO will readily mix with air by the natural movement of air in the appliance room. Fire separations that have been breached will allow the contaminated CO/air mixture to move into any adjacent dwelling units, again by natural air movement.

Even though the Ontario Fire Code requires all fire separations to be maintained intact, experience has shown that a significant majority of fire separations around fuel-fired appliance rooms have been breached to one degree or another. Since these fire separations are not a reliable barrier between fuel-fired appliance rooms and adjacent dwelling units, CO detectors should be required in all such dwelling units in multi-unit residential buildings.

1D.CO detectors should also be provided in dwelling units in multi-unit residential buildings with attached garages where the volume of the garage is insufficient to provide adequate dilution of CO. Such small garages are common in smaller multi-unit residential buildings where single- or two-car garages are provided directly beneath dwelling units. This arrangement is no different than is commonly found in most single family dwellings, and therefore presents a similar degree of risk of CO infiltration into the occupied portions of the building.

1E.Since most fuel-fired appliance rooms are unattended, the possibility exists for a malfunctioning fuel-fired appliance to produce hazardous levels of CO undetected for a significant period of time. A detector sounding an alarm in an unattended room could go unnoticed.

No notification of such a situation would occur until the CO detectors in any adjacent dwelling units actuate, if there are such adjacent units. It would be preferable to notify building supervisory staff sooner than later that fuel-fired appliances are malfunctioning. Remote annunciation of the alarm signal from a CO detector in a fuel-fired appliance room would help prevent CO levels from reaching concentrations in the room that would be considered to be immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH).

Commercial type CO detectors would be required for this application since most models intended for use in single family dwellings are not to be installed in close proximity to potential CO sources. Also, models intended for single family dwelling are not capable of providing remote annunciation of alarm signals.

1.Making adequate maintenance of fuel-fired appliances mandatory helps eliminate the source of CO before it presents a hazard. It makes more sense to prevent the hazard from occurring than notifying people that the hazard now exists.

2.Using terminology that is already in use in established documents such as the Fire and Building Codes will reduce confusion and facilitate enforcement.

3.Investigators with the By-Law Enforcement Section of the former City of North York have expressed frustration with the term Afor gain@ that is used in their zoning by-law because it is difficult to prove in court that accommodations have been provided Afor gain@. Also, using terminology similar to the existing Codes will reduce confusion and facilitate enforcement.

4.The term Aelectrically powered@ in the definition of ACarbon Monoxide Detector@ should be changed since even battery operated devices are electrically powered. CSA does require battery operated devices to conform to its standards. The recommended phrase (Aconnected to the primary electrical supply for the building@) also covers the plug-in type of detector, so that this type of device must comply with CSA electrical safety standards.

5.The term Amultiple occupancies@ in Item 4 may lead to confusion or dispute since both the OFC and OBC application of AoccupancyA is usually understood to mean type of use. That is, the by-law=s use of Amultiple occupancies@ might be taken to mean that there must be commercial or mercantile uses in the same building as the residential occupancy in order for CO detection to be required.

Conclusions:

While the objective of the GTAA is valid, the information provided to support their position is inadequate. The amendments to the By-Law listed in the "Recommendations" section above should be considered on the basis of the reasoning provided in the AComments and/or Discussion and/or Justification@ section above.

Contact Name:

Terry Boyko

Deputy Chief

397-4302

Alan F. Speed

Fire Chief

Barry H. Gutteridge

Commissioner

Works & Emergency Services

JC/mm