Derek Cole explains why your heat smells like burning when you first turn it on: dust igniting on heat strips or heat pump parts. If it smells like raw gas instead, call your HVAC technician or gas company immediately, and make sure you have carbon monoxide detectors.
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Why is it that you smell something burning when you turn your heat on for the first time, but not after that?
Hey, everyone, I'm Derek Cole, host of the Derek Cole Podcast, and we believe in taking the time to explain how things work for your air at home or your business. Let's get into today's episode. Please listen closely and maybe even take some notes so you can remember these insights of home comfort and energy savings and share this episode with three of your friends, because we all need to share better ways to be more comfortable at home. Be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram Derek Mcole so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening. And let's begin.
What happens is, with your heat and your strip heat coming on as backup heat over the long summer, they're not used, they gather dust. So on that first time it's used, it's really burning the dust off. If you have a maintenance done, if it's done in the springtime, middle summer, you'll get that more often. As we're doing maintenance now where it's cooler, of course, we're activating that, you know, heat strip to make sure it is working. But again, if you had that maintenance in the summertime, it's probably gonna have that smell this time of year. So it's just, it's just the dust and stuff burning off. There's nothing to be alarmed about. It does kind of smell like a electrical burning smell, and that's the dust. So it's nothing to be alarmed about.
Maybe you should address too, because I had this phone call the other day. The difference between like that kind of smell and this lady called in and I just turned my heat on for the first time, but now it smells like gas.
Yeah. You shouldn't be having a raw gas smell. Yeah. So with that, you could have a gas pressure issue or a gas line issue. A lot of units we go to, we do have to adjust the pressure every year and depending on if it's lp, if they refilled the tank, if there's somewhere in a gas line during the summer, maybe a rock hit something and did a little thing. So, yeah, you shouldn't be having a kind of a raw gas smell when it comes on. I would, I would call the gas company or your heating and air company, just check it out. Because this, that's two different kind of smells. I mean, one's a dust kind of electrical burning smell on a heat pump and ones that just raw gas and that's, that's very dangerous. So you don't want to do that. And again, I'll say it because it's very important. With any gas appliance, you should have a CO detector in your home. You want to make sure because LP or gas in general, they put that smell in there. I mean, it's not natural, you know, rotten egg smell. They put it in there for a reason. So you can smell it, detect it. But with co, when it leaks out, or if you got to hold the heat exchanger or whatever, you know, that's, you're not going to see it or smell it. So that's why you need a detector to make sure you're safe and your family is safe because it's something that you can't smell. So yeah, and I think RCA detectors also detect natural gas when they come in. So again, you shouldn't be having, you shouldn't have a raw gas smell. So bad smell. Electrical burning heat strips for the first time of year. That's okay. That's gonna happen. Raw gas not okay. You need cost of money.
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