Derek Cole and William Skipper explain why your heating smells like burning when you first turn it on. Usually it's just dust on the heat strips burning off, though heat pumps can smell during defrost cycles. A pre-season tune-up helps, but call 911 if you see actual fire.
Chapters
Hey, this is Derek Cole along with William Skipper. And welcome to the Comfort Experts. And today we're talking about a phone call we get quite a few times this time of year, which is I just turned my heat on and there's a burning smell. What is happening with that? So, William, what's going on with the burning smell?
Most of the time, what you find is that the heat hadn't been around all year. So whether it's gas or heat pump, you've got a dust build up on your heating side of your unit. And once we start applying the heat, what's it gonna do? It's gotta burn that dust off. And a lot of times you will. Sometimes you can actually have smoke come out, it's just so thick. But that's what we find. Your heat strips, come on, they're burning the dust off your gas furnace coming on, it's burning the dust off the heat exchanger. And that's what you're gonna find with that most of the time.
Yeah. And especially when the unit, when it's really cold and you have a heat pump and it goes into defrost and you have two things going on. One time you have the burning smell and then you look outside and see the frost being burned off of the unit or melting off of the unit. So you're gonna think fire.
First. Response. 91 1, get out, stay out.
But it's completely normal, normal operation, so you don't really have a problem. It is a good tip to have it checked before you start heating. Have that tune up done. Go and get this out of the way to make sure you're ready for the heating season when it arrives. That way you're not surprised. So for more information, give us a call 910-53462 or go to onehouraircarolinas. Com.
