Derek Cole explains what to do if you smell gas while your heat is running. Shut off the gas, leave the house immediately, and call the gas company or 911. Have both the gas company and a licensed HVAC contractor inspect your system before using it again.
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Home and Life Comfort with Derek Cole. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Home and Life Comfort podcast. I'm Derek Cole with Simmons. One hour hitting there. We're doing something very special today. We're going live on Instagram. If you guys are not following me on instagram @derek mcole on Instagram, we are doing a live today. We're testing this out, see how it goes. But we also want to talk about something that I want you to take seriously today. I want you to take it very serious because it's one of these topics where you don't get a second chance. We're talking about smelling gas when your heating system is running. Let me be clear. You should never, ever smell gas when your system is running. You shouldn't smell gas, period. Plain and simple. But definitely when your system is running, when that odor shows up, it's your home telling you, hey, something isn't right. That smell, the, the rotten egg kind of smell. That smell is added to gas on purpose so you will notice it. So you will smell it and say, hey, I smell that. Okay? It's there for you to notice it. And if you notice it, you definitely don't want to ignore it. So what that smell really means. If your furnace is on and you guess that rotten egg smell, you're usually dealing with one or two things. Number one, could be a gas pressure issue. That's something that can be checked out on the maintenance to make sure your unit is running at the right gas pressure, but it could also be in the gas line. You never know. Number two, could be a leak in that gas line or a leak in the connection in that gas line. Neither of those are small problems. Nothing, nothing warrants you to wait until tomorrow. If you have that problem, have that smell, stop what you're doing and deal with it right now. Those two things are right now problems. Not wait till later. Wait to see what happens. Let me, let me see how it goes. That's not the case, but here's exactly what to do. If you're listening to this in the car or walking, just remember the a really simple list. Step one, turn off the gas supply immediately. There should be a gas shut off right there at the gas meter. Should be gas shut off for your unit as well. If everything is up to code and has been inspected, you'll have that so you can shut off. Step one, turn off the gas immediately. Step two, get out of the house. Okay. Don't flip switches. Don't, don't get a lighter and see what's going on. Don't touch anything that could Spark. But step two, get out of the house. Step three, call your gas company or call 911 immediately. Again, nothing. You want to wait. Once everything's checked out, once everything's safe, call a licensed H VAC professional to inspect the system and figure out what went wrong. If it's in the system again, it could be the gas line, it could be a pressure issue, but you need to see what's going on. Once the gas company check, they check everything out. Call H. VAC Licensed contractor to double check what went wrong. Make sure everything's good to go because, well, when it comes to gas, you don't troubleshoot. Okay? You act. When it comes to gas, you don't troubleshoot. You act. A quick safety reminder. If you have anything in the house on gas, Gas stove, gas dryer, gas water heater, gas furnace. If you have anything in house on gas, make sure you have a carbon monoxide alarm installed in the proper areas. Carbon monoxide is odorless, it's colorless, is invisible, but it's also deadly. A detector is your early warning system in every home. Every home with gas should have those available now. Bonus. Where do you install the carbon monoxide alarm? Because I've been to quite a few houses and they have kind of like combo fire carbon CO alarm and it's like open the ceiling. Okay, that's good for a smoke detector, but it's not good for a CO detector. CO is slightly, slightly heav heavier than air. So it's going to start low and then go high. So going to start low, then go high. So you want it to be at the ground level, the receptacles on the wall, that level to safely alarm you when that goes off. You also want to place them close to sleeping quarters. Now, if your home has multiple areas of bedrooms, and then you place one in one area and one in another area, you want it to be placed at those areas. That way, if you're sleeping, you can hear the alarm go off. You have plugged into the wall, the wall level, so you can catch that if there were a problem. Your home is supposed to be the place where you feel the safest smelling. Gas inside your home is a sign something is broken, and ignoring it is not worth the risk. Take the smell seriously. Take action immediately, and when the dust settles, let us come out. Make sure your system is operating the way it should. It's what we need to do, and it's what keeps families safe. So call us. Go online simmons1hour.com Any questions? Comment right here, let me know. Be happy to help you out. This is Derek Cole, your friend in Comfort and Energy Savings, Home and Life Comfort with Derrick Cole.
