A Ngaruawahia family were "very lucky" to survive carbon monoxide poising after they brought their BBQ inside to keep warm.

A call of nature saved the lives of a Waikato family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Their close call comes just a month after an Ashburton mother and her children died from the fumes of a car left running in a garage to keep the battery "ticking over".

The South African father of two girls, who asked not to be named, got up for the toilet in the early hours of Sunday morning only to lose consciousness in the bathroom of his Kia Toa St, Ngaruawahia, home.

"I started feeling nauseous walking to the toilet and I fell, hitting my head," he said.

He was floored by the gas from garden rubbish burning on a charcoal tripod mounted barbecue the family had brought into the living room through the folding doors to help keep warm.

The noise he made as he went down, hitting his head on the shower cubicle, around 2am woke the others in the house who came to his aid.

"My oldest daughter, who is 12, said 'I am phoning 111,' but as soon as she talked she gave the phone to me and collapsed," the mother said.

Their younger daughter, 10, dropped on to the living room couch before she reached the bathroom from her bedroom.

The family were taken to Waikato Hospital by St John Ambulance, the adults in a serious condition, after emergency services arrived at their home. They were sent home 11 hours later after being given oxygen.

"If he did not get up to the toilet, we would be dead," she said. "We are just lucky to be alive."

The father had spent some of the day in the garden pruning small trees which he burned on the barbecue.

"We brought it in to warm the house," the mother said. "We didn't want the heat to go to waste.

"It's something we had done once before, only for an hour."

Normally they would have turned to more conventional heaters, but both had recently failed and been moved to the garage on their way to disposal.

It wasn't long before the mother started to feel ill, but didn't connect the way she was feeling with the burning barbecue.

"I had an extremely bad headache, felt sick, felt palpitations, my heart was racing," she said.

Looking back on the experience, the mother said her family's brush with death had given them a new appreciation of life.

"You take life for granted. It just makes you appreciate things more."

Two South African men died in 2008 after inhaling fumes from a charcoal barbecue they brought inside to heat a tiny cabin at Ruapuke Camping Ground near Raglan. A third man fell in and out of consciousness as he dragged himself along the floor of the cabin in a desperate attempt to get help for his mates.

Ngaruawahia Deputy Fire Chief Darren Hennessy said people needed to remember to only use barbecues and open fireplaces outdoors and not inside the home.

"If there is enough carbon monoxide in the air versus oxygen in the room, you are in danger of being overcome with carbon monoxide, which will make you feel ill, vomit and cause you to lose consciousness. You will eventually not wake up.

"They were very lucky."

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