Derek ColeGM, Simmons One Hour Heating & Air · AI HVAC Answers

Burning Smell? Dust on Heat Strips Explained! #shorts

13 Nov 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:52

A short explanatory YouTube video (by Derek Cole) describing why occupants sometimes smell a burning odor when electric heat strips are first activated after months of disuse (speaker cites March/April as last use). The speaker attributes the smell to dust burning off the heat-strip wiring, states that this is usually not dangerous (a hazardous fault would trip breakers), and notes that maintenance crews often pre-activate heat strips before cold weather to prevent the odor on the first cold night.

Chapters

Has gone from, I don't know, March, April. So March, April till now, without running heat strips. Without running heat. So what happens is dust builds up on those electric wires, and once those are activated, it burns it off. Therefore, you get a burning smell. So that is what you're getting in the house. Usually it's nothing dangerous. Now, if it was dangerous, it would obviously be too much for the wiring and trip the breaker and be a safety hazard. So if none of that is happening, then it's probably just burning off the excess dust from not being used. So that burning smell, when we come out and do a maintenance, we activate the heat strips this time of year to get out of the way. So that really first cold night, if you haven't used it already, you won't have that problem.