The Nose Knows
Within our family, I am sometimes criticized about how sensitive my sense of smell is. The slightest smell of certain things can be overpowering to me. This is, of course, coupled with a less-than-adequate ability to hear.
Less than a week ago, we installed a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze with UV and all sorts of bells and whistles in our bedroom. These dudes put out clean air, but they also produce ozone. When we got it, I cranked it up to full throttle for a few hours, but found that the ozone odor was too much for me and reduced the setting to medium. The ozone is still there, but at a somewhat acceptable level given my sensitivities.
The other day, I came into the kitchen. Marian had extinguished a candle in there about 10 minutes previously and I commented on the smell of something burning. Yesterday, when I was doing afternoon feeding in the barn, I raked up some loose hay and produced a spark for an instant, which worried the dickens out of me causing me to check and recheck that nothing had caught on fire.
Tonight, I had to go into the basement to look for some old tax records. I went up and down the steps four or five times. Each time, I smelled just a whiff of natural gas. On a couple of the trips, I convinced myself that it was ozone I was smelling from air being circulated into the basement from our bedroom. But it kept coming back to me that it was gas. Not strong, but there. Not always, but enough.
I called our HVAC service man who had me go down into the basement a couple of times to see if I still smelled it and to also look at the burners on the furnaces to see that they were lit. I did and they were. So, he came out here about 7:00 PM. He had his gas sniffer out and it smelled gas, but it came and went and he could not pinpoint the source. Finally, he took a butane lighter, the kind you use in a fireplace or BBQ grill, and ran flames up and down the gas pipe that went into one of the furnaces. Seems there was a gas leak indeed. The T connection coming from the gas line and into the furnace has a tiny crack in it…the gas lighter caused it to burn ever so slightly for a few seconds. He repeated this experiment a couple of times. Ooooo, look at the pretty blue flame coming out of the pipe!
The nose knows. I am vindicated once again.
Less than a week ago, we installed a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze with UV and all sorts of bells and whistles in our bedroom. These dudes put out clean air, but they also produce ozone. When we got it, I cranked it up to full throttle for a few hours, but found that the ozone odor was too much for me and reduced the setting to medium. The ozone is still there, but at a somewhat acceptable level given my sensitivities.
The other day, I came into the kitchen. Marian had extinguished a candle in there about 10 minutes previously and I commented on the smell of something burning. Yesterday, when I was doing afternoon feeding in the barn, I raked up some loose hay and produced a spark for an instant, which worried the dickens out of me causing me to check and recheck that nothing had caught on fire.
Tonight, I had to go into the basement to look for some old tax records. I went up and down the steps four or five times. Each time, I smelled just a whiff of natural gas. On a couple of the trips, I convinced myself that it was ozone I was smelling from air being circulated into the basement from our bedroom. But it kept coming back to me that it was gas. Not strong, but there. Not always, but enough.
I called our HVAC service man who had me go down into the basement a couple of times to see if I still smelled it and to also look at the burners on the furnaces to see that they were lit. I did and they were. So, he came out here about 7:00 PM. He had his gas sniffer out and it smelled gas, but it came and went and he could not pinpoint the source. Finally, he took a butane lighter, the kind you use in a fireplace or BBQ grill, and ran flames up and down the gas pipe that went into one of the furnaces. Seems there was a gas leak indeed. The T connection coming from the gas line and into the furnace has a tiny crack in it…the gas lighter caused it to burn ever so slightly for a few seconds. He repeated this experiment a couple of times. Ooooo, look at the pretty blue flame coming out of the pipe!
The nose knows. I am vindicated once again.
posted by Bud Hirsch at 7:50 PM
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