Odor from gas heater

Brad White_9

If the smell occurs on one side of the house, I see the issue, whatever it is, being downstream of the furnace. If it were within the furnace the smell would be everywhere. Does the ductwork support this theory? IOW: Does the ductwork leaving the furnace split along the lines of smell/no smell at the registers?

Might be old wiring or something in the duct that emits odor when heated. Old childs toy, nesting rodents bringing in stuff (I know- Eeewwww!)

Jon_16

Odor from gas heater

We have a carrier gas furnace. Starting about 2 months ago, VERY occasionally vents on one side of the house start emitting a very strong odor that I would describe as a smokey rubber odor. The smell happens at all times of the day, is expelled from the vents for about an hour, and within and hour or two it is gone. It seems very clearly to come from vents in one part of the house, and if you walk by the heater when it is coming out from the vents the heater does smell.

We have had the heater checked out, and he could find nothing wrong. The gas company has checked for gas and CO, and they found nothing. We've had the vents cleaned, and it still happens.

HELP!

Thanks.

Charles G.

Smelly furnace

Where's the cat? Seriously, can't offer much help from here. Two different people were THERE and couldn't find anything. The rest of us are here...
Time to get someone there willing to spend the time to satify you.

Jon_16

Sigh

No cat in the house. No kids of an age that registers could be removed.

The odd (VERY ODD) thing is that the odor is so intermittent. The heater could be on all day for days at a time (it IS cold here in Philly sometimes), and the odor comes on out of nowhere, and stops as suddenly, regardless of whether the heater is on. That's why I'm figuring it is a heater issue - something periodically in the guts is burning. I was hoping that the description of the problem would sound familiar....

Rich Kontny_3

Get it Checked Out.

If you are not proactive and have seasonal on your heating and cooling equipment.You want to become reactive in a hurry to avoid some serious damge and or conditions.

Call a reputable service company, the sooner the better.

Rich K.

Jon_16

I'm having a contractor come out today that can look at both the ductwork AND the heater. It has to be one of the two.... I hope.

Jon_16

I was there!

I happened to be in the basement yesterday for the start of one of the "incidents." Here is the chronology:

Our heater (a Carrier combination gas furnace/A/C) is about 17 years old. When the heat kicks on, it goes in phases. There is a minute or so cycle where it sounds like there is a small fan kicking on and the pilot light and burners are starting to heat up. After about a minute, the blower starts.

Last night, I heard the sound of an electrical circuit turning on, and after about 20 seconds it turned off. The blower never kicked on, and it sounded like the “startup” phase didn’t finish. A few other things I noticed - we have a humidifier that turns on ONLY when the heater is on. After that circuit/pilot sound, the humidifier started to run and didn't turn off although the blower never started. (coincidentally or not, the carpet near the heater was soaking wet. I think that the humidifier was running when these things keep happening, and overflowed onto the carpet. But that’s just my theory.)

I went up to the thermostat, a digital Honeywell connected to the power from the heater. The thermostat was blank - the time and temperature was off. I tried to turn the switch from auto to "on" to manually switch on the heater, and there was no response (We'd typically hear the sound of the heater's initial cycle turning on).

I went upstairs, AND THE SMELL (like metallic burning rubber for those new to this….) HAD STARTED. It was very strong.

I went down to the basement to see if the heater was smoking or anything, and it wasn't. The smell wasn’t particularly noticeable next to the heater. I was down there for about 5 minutes, and went back to the thermostat, which had switched back on. I played around with the temperature and fan (which went on). Initially, the system was only blowing air that wasn’t being heated. After a period of about 20 minutes, I was able to get the heater to start blowing hot air. The odor coming from the vents had traces of the smell for about an hour, and then the smell had mostly gone away.

It apparently happened again this morning – my wife called and told me she detected the odor again.

Does the new information help? Between the increasing frequency (at least once a day, where it used to be every week or so) and the quirkiness with the humidifier and the blank thermostat, this seems less like a duct problem and more like an electrical problem to me. We did just have the ducts cleaned, too. I'd hope that the cleaning would have gotten out any dead animals in the ducts. But I know nothing…. 