Carbon Monoxide Dectectors

[Cockbollocks]

What would you recommend for a tent, just a normal household one or are there special tent ones!!!

Much safer to just not use anything that might produce carbon monoxide in the tent. No detector is 100% reliable, but if there's no possibility of carbon monoxide you can't have a problem.

We have a tent with in two 'family' areas and three bedrooms. We set up our camping stove in the outer 'family area' which is kept open and serves as a kind of porch area.

Is this not ok? If not how do you cook if it rains? We have been lucky so far and generally been able to keep the stove completely outside the tent. However I worry about when it is in the porch area.

I am not an expert, but by the sounds of it you have effectively got one side of the cooking area open to the outside, in which case there will be ample air supply to the stove and no carbon monoxide should be produced. If it is a gas stove then if the flame is blue and clean that is an indication that there is enough oxygen. Carbon monoxide forms either because there is limited air supply or because the burner is poorly set up. If your stove flame is yellow or sooty I would be a bit concerned. I think barbecues have been the cause of deaths in tents, they always produce carbon monoxide, because of the way they burn and continue to do so when they appear to have gone out. Barbecues should never be taken into tents. Never use a stove to warm up an enclosed area in a tent, there is the potential to consume oxygen faster than it can be replenished, leading to carbon monoxide being produced.

Chemeger - you seem like you might know the answer to this question. We had a new CO alarm for our new to us very old caravan for last weeks holiday. On nights we didn't open windows or long days out it went off.
We didn't have the gas cable attached and it was checked at the ports too.

What could have caused it?
Thanks!