A series of tests was conducted to characterize the indoor CO concentrations resulting from portable electric generators operating in the attached garage of a test house under various use and environmental conditions. An extensive model validation effort using the multizone airflow and indoor air quality (IAQ) model CONTAM was carried out using the data from seven tests with a generator operating in the attached garage to compare predicted CO concentrations with measured values. The agreement between the measurements and predictions of the O2 concentrations in the garage and the average CO concentration for the house zones was excellent for the dataset as a whole. The agreement was somewhat worse for the garage CO concentrations. Overall, the house zone average and garage CO concentration predictions and measurements were within about 20 % and 30 % respectively when averaged over all cases.
Keywords: CONTAM; Portable electric generator; carbon monoxide; indoor air quality; model validation; multizone airflow model.