How high do CO₂ levels get in a covered dog crate?

A year ago I built 2 DIY weather/air quality sensor packs to monitor the ambient conditions inside and outside, including carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels. Meanwhile, I got a COVID-puppy who sleeps in a covered dog crate. I got to wondering what kind of CO₂ levels that crate got up to at night. So I measured it.

Covered dog crate with air quality sensor pack under it. You can see that there are some gaps.

I just slipped the sensors under the cover like this and let it run all night.

Sensor pack as seen from inside dog crate

I graphed the readings from the previous day (outside the dog crate) and then inside the dog crate, as indicated with the arrow. As you can see, CO₂ levels did spike quite a bit but did not get above 2000 ppm. For humans, this would be expected to cause drowsiness and complaints about stale air, but would not be harmful.

The actual CO2 readings outside and inside the dog crate overnight.

So in conclusion, a mostly-covered dog crate isn’t deadly, but may be unconformable. I will be opening the back panel at least. I’m a little worried that if the cover was placed so that there were fewer gaps, it could get much higher.

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