KLS wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:53:08 GMT, "Joseph Meehan"
wrote:

There are two typical smells from a gas furnace. One is the
actual gas. It does not smell like "burn" but very distinctive.

Joe is right, but the smell he's talking about is not the actual gas
Rather, it is the aromatic additive put into the gas by the suppliers
to make the gas actually detectable by people. That's a safety
feature, and the smell is unpleasant and totally different from
anything else most of us would smell in a routine life.

Very true. The stuff is called mercaptan and it takes very little. It
is burned along with the gas so you don't smell it at all under normal
conditions.


Other than that it is usually burnt dust. That means getting the
furnace cleaned and making sure you have a good filter in place to
reduce it in the future. If you don't have a furnace filter, that is
why you have the smell.

Burnt dust smells pretty much like you'd expect it to, and the smell
typically is not of long duration, usually for the first few hours you
run a furnace after not running it for a long time. I experienced
this often with my old gravity furnace (bless Olivia the octopus, ca.
1910, who started life as a coal-fed furnace and then was converted to
natural gas some time in the 1950s or 1960s and was unrelentingly
reliable if not efficient) and wasn't bothered by it.

The "natural gas" smell is offensive, though, and the MINUTE you smell
it, you should call your local utility company.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit