Top-rated independent heating and cooling across north Georgia and the southern Appalachians
Smelling Gas at Home
You walked past the furnace and caught that rotten egg smell. Maybe it is faint, maybe it hits you at the basement stairs. Here is the short version: get everyone out of the house, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside. Do not try to find the leak yourself. Once the gas company clears the house, call us for the heating repair.
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STM Heating & Air service team · field-reviewed before publishing
Do These Four Things, In This Order
1. Get every person and pet out of the house. Leave the door open behind you if it is easy, but do not stop to open windows all over the place. 2. Walk well away from the building, out to the street or a neighbour's yard. 3. From outside, call 911 or the emergency number on your gas bill. Propane customers, call your propane supplier's emergency line. 4. Stay outside until someone from the gas utility or fire department tells you the house is safe to enter. That is the whole list. Everything else can wait.
What Not to Do
Do not flip light switches, unplug anything, or hit a garage door opener. Do not use a lighter or strike a match to see better. Do not start a car in an attached garage. Do not call from inside the house if you have any other option, and do not go back in for a phone, a laptop or the dog's leash. Do not shut off the gas valve at the meter unless the utility asks you to and walks you through it. Do not open the furnace cabinet, poke at the gas line, or try to tighten a fitting. Gas work is not a homeowner job, ever.
How to Tell Gas From Other Furnace Smells
Natural gas and propane carry an added rotten egg or sulphur odour so you can smell them. That smell means leave now. A dusty, hot smell on the first burn of the season is usually dust cooking off the heat exchanger and it fades in an hour or so. A sharp electrical or burnt plastic smell means shut the system off at the thermostat and call us. If the smell is sour or musty and comes from the vents, that is often a damp crawlspace or duct issue, common in red clay soil across the region. When in doubt, treat it as gas and get out.
Carbon Monoxide Is a Separate Danger
Carbon monoxide has no smell at all, so you cannot rely on your nose. If a CO alarm sounds, or if people in the house have headaches, nausea or dizziness that eases when they step outside, get everyone out and call 911 from outside. Do not silence the alarm and go back to bed. CO can come from a cracked heat exchanger, a blocked flue, or a bird nest in the vent, and none of that is visible from the hallway. Put a working CO alarm on every level with sleeping areas, and test it when you change the filter.
When to Call Us and What We Do Next
Call us after the gas utility has been out and the house is safe to enter. They will usually shut the gas off at the meter or cap the line and leave the repair to a heating contractor. That is our part. We check the gas valve, the connections at the furnace, the burners, the heat exchanger and the flue, and we test the system under fire before we sign off. We work on furnaces, heat pumps and dual-fuel setups across Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, including propane systems up the ridges where natural gas never reached.
Staying Ahead of It
Most gas smells we get called on trace back to something small that had been building: a loose fitting after other work in the crawlspace, a corroded flex connector, a cracked burner, or a flue joint that separated. An annual heating tune-up before cold weather is where those show up. We also check draft, look at the heat exchanger, and clean burners so the furnace lights clean instead of rolling out. If your furnace is older and you have never had it looked at, book the visit in early fall rather than the first freezing night.
Smelling Gas at Home — fast answers
Is a faint gas smell near the furnace still an emergency?
Treat it as one. A small leak can grow, and your nose is not a measuring tool. Leave the house, call 911 or your gas utility from outside, and let them test before anyone goes back in.
Should I turn off the gas valve myself?
No. Leave that to the gas utility or fire department. If they ask you to shut off a valve, follow their instructions exactly. Otherwise stay outside and let them handle the meter and the line.
Why does my furnace smell for the first hour each winter?
That is usually dust burning off the heat exchanger and burners after months idle, and it fades. If it smells like rotten eggs, burnt plastic or electrical burning instead, shut it off and get help.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill in the quote form and describe what you hear, smell or feel. Warm air, short cycling, a breaker that keeps tripping. That gives us a head start on the likely cause.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
A technician checks the thermostat, airflow, electrical connections, refrigerant performance and the outdoor unit. We work the crawlspace and the attic too, because ductwork and drainage cause more trouble than people expect.
- Step 3
You decide, then we fix it
We explain what failed, what it takes to repair it, and what we would watch next season. No work starts until you say go. Most repairs finish the same visit when parts are on the truck.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- Mixed heating is normal to usHeat pumps, propane furnaces and dual-fuel setups all behave differently in cold weather. We know how a heat pump should sound in the thirties and when the backup heat is doing too much of the work.
- We go under the houseRed clay crawlspaces hide crushed ducts, sweating lines and standing water. Comfort problems often start down there, not at the unit, so we look before we start replacing parts you may not need.
- Plain explanationsYou get told what broke and why, in words that make sense. If a repair is a short-term patch on an aging system, we say that out loud so you can plan instead of guessing.
- One crew, six statesWe serve homeowners across Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Same approach in every one: show up, diagnose properly, repair what needs repairing, leave the space clean.
- All major brands, gas & electricOne independent crew for Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem and more.
- Straight answersNot worth fixing? We say that out loud, and often it saves you the visit fee.
About this guide
Safe checks done and it still misbehaves? That's a real fault
Tell us what you tried and what it did. The booking itself takes a minute.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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