Natural Gas smell inside the house?

[mhsjax]

Natural gas is scented with methyl mercaption. Ironically, people with limited senses of smell who cannot detect rotting meat often times also cannot detect methyl mercaption with their noses. The human body naturally produces the substance and it is excreted in feces... and thus the mental linkage when you smell it. In another "fun fact", methyl mercaption is what makes "asparagus pee" smell as it is a byproduct of the digestion of that vegetable.

Gotta love that asparagus stuff. I never knew what caused it, thanks for the info.

 

[ClarabelleCowFan]

OP, we had a very minor gas leak a few years ago that my DH was able to detect outside our house by smell alone. It was so faint that the gas co. technician had to put a diluted soap solution on the gas line connection pipes (near our meter) to detect it, the equipment the technician had was not sensitive enough to detect the leak. The leaking gas caused soap bubbles to appear--the same test you use on your gas barbecue to check connections.

You may want to ask the gas co. to send the technician over to test around all the connections in your house using the soap solution.

Another thought occurs, if your garage is attached to your house--do you have things like a gas-powered lawn mower or snowblower stored in your garage? If all the valves on your gas-powered equipment are not fully shut off, you can get the smell of gas coming into your house from your garage. Of course, this would not be a smell of mercaptan, but a gasoline type of smell.

We do have an attached garage and the lawn mower and weed-eater are stored inside but they have always been so this isn't anything new.

Yes, natural gas is odorless without the mercaption. The control center I used to run also dispatched for the gas department and sometimes the pipeline company would add too much mercaption to the system and that would generate a lot of calls. In short order, the gas companies would be notified, but it's possible your gas serviceman had not yet gotten the word, if that's what happened. Another thing that can happen is a leak from the underground lines outside can migrate along the pipes and work it's way into your house. In any event, if you still smell the gas, keep calling until you get an answer or a leak is found and fixed. Although rare, a serviceman may not discover the leak on the first inspection.

I did speak with the property manager and sure enough the gas man missed one of the furnaces. The one that heats the upstairs of the house is in the attic access point above the garage. The HVAC company is sending someone out this afternoon/evening to check both systems and until then the heat is shut off.

I swear I have a bionic nose because I will smell stuff when others can't. When DD16 came and told me that she smelled gas too then I knew it must be pretty strong. We won't let this rest until we find out why.

I'm also dragging the lawn mower and the weed-eater outside to the backyard for now until DH gets home later this week to deal with them.