Please can I ask some advice re gas

[MrsMaxwell]

Hi - a few weeks ago (first lot of snow) me and the kids thought the house stank of gas.

I phoned the emergency number, we waited in the freezing temperatures with all the doors and windows open and all the lights off and the gas guy came and checked everything for a good hour and throughly and said there was no leak, said he had a cold and could smell something but it’s not gas.

We all think the kitchen still stinks of gas (clearly there has been no explosion) and I don’t really know what do to?

Do I call them back? What else could the smell be?

It could be fumes from the sewers, or something spilled like fish sauce, durian fruit, asafoetida or garlic. (Or gas).

Could it possibly be a dead mouse? Sounds nuts I know but I did make that mistake once

I don’t know what durian fruit is so def not that and we rarely eat fish.

The gas man saying it’s not gas makes me think I am going mad but the cupboard where the gas meter is stinks of gas

Well I grew up in a old cottage and we often had dead mice rot under the floorboards not envy so I know what that smells like and it gets consistently worse

I’d call again. It’s not worth risking.

If you think you can smell gas, call them back out. Better to be a time waster imo.

Gosh that must be so worrying.

What is gas in your house? Cooker? Boiler? If you have an orange flame rather than a bright blue flame, it can indicate a leak.

And that is the sum of my gas knowledge, sorry.
I wonder if the snow has cracked a pipe not in your home but for some reason it is accumulating there?

If I get a carbon monoxide alarm tomorrow and put it in the kitchen will that tell me if there is a leak?

It could be gas from a neighbouring building do you have any empty houses next door?

I have gas central heating and a gas hob and I have been putting a lot more on the meter recently which I told the gas man.

His equipment looked quite old and not out of place in Ghostbusters.

Turn everything off that uses gas and see if the meter is still going round. If it is you have a leak.

I have elderly neighbours next door but not attached side (where the cupboard is that stinks of gas).

ineedamoreadultieradult

Fab idea thanks - doesn’t help that the meter is in the very back of a dark cupboard and I was too terrified to look at it with a torch when’ll during the initial incident.

When the man came, he would have had to have used a personal gas detector. A tiny alarm round his neck on a lanyard or on his belt. It is legislation. The alarm would have gone batshit at the tiniest amount of gas. It’s not a noise you or he could’ve not heard - think car alarm loud.

Do you know anyone locally who works in construction, electricals, underground work, telecoms or highways? We all have personal gas detectors. Again, it’s legislation. Worth calling in a favour?

He didn’t have a lanyard think around his neck - he had a thing that looked like a massive old Roberts radio with a long metal pole coming out of it .....

Carbon monoxide detectors don't detect natural gas.

Get a second opinion OP.

It does sound like a gas leak, I'd call someone else.

Yeah I think I will tomorrow (not really feeling the urgency as it’s been two weeks!).

He should have performed a drop test on your gas supply to ascertain whether there was a problem, not just rely on his nose. We had a tiny leak at our meter which made the cupboard stink but wasn't dangerous. Resolved by having a new meter fitted. Call them back.

We had a new meter 3 years ago when we had our kitchen done.

He did have a weird a machine thing but all the kids and their partners are saying it stinks of gas 😭😭

Do you have a service contract on your boiler? Of so, get them out to check it. You shouldn't be able to smell gas at all if it's working correctly. I've had horrendous problems this winter with intermittent gas smells coming from our boiler, and it's taken 5 seperate visits to finally (please god) fix it.

Call them. They will take it seriously. We had a very very low level leak in the kitchen (so low the hob still passed the gas safety test) and when I mentioned it to the Briyish Gas guy who came round to fit a smart meter, he had National Grid round within 20 minutes and the choice of having him disconnect the meter or National Grid.

Fortunately I managed to get our gas safe engineer round before anyone disconnected anything cue four blokes standing in my kitchen arguing about gas while toddler and I looked on.

Suffice to say the tester picked it up, even though nobody could smell anything, and the entire hob had to be refitted. Nobody thought this was excessive. They were all very clear that if you can smell gas, you need to turn off the gas and call them. Now. even if you've been able to smell it for months