Derek Cole explains why electric heat strips in HVAC systems smell like burning when you first turn them on. Dust accumulates during idle periods and burns off when the heat activates. It's usually harmless unless it trips a breaker, so running the strips during maintenance clears the dust before winter.
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. 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 on to 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.