Homeowners' pick for heating and cooling across central Kentucky and the Bluegrass
Smelling Gas at Home
You walked past the furnace and caught that rotten-egg smell. Maybe it is faint, maybe it filled the basement. Either way, stop reading long enough to do one thing: get everybody out of the house, then call 911 or your gas utility from outside. Once the gas company has cleared the house, we handle the heating repair that follows. Here is the order to do things in.
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By our service team · vetted by the techs who do this daily
1. Leave the building, then call from outside
Get every person and pet out the door and leave it unlocked behind you. Do not stop to open windows, pack anything or hunt for the source. Once you are outside and a good distance from the house, call 911 or your gas utility's emergency line. Both will send someone out, and both would rather come for nothing than come too late. Tell them you smell gas near the furnace and whether anyone feels sick. If your propane supplier has an emergency number, call that too. Stay outside until a utility technician or the fire department tells you the house is safe to enter. That call is free and it is the whole point.
2. What not to do on your way out
Do not flip any switch, light or breaker, on or off. Do not use the garage door opener. Do not light a match or a lighter, and do not smoke. Do not plug in or unplug anything. Cell phones and cordless phones are best used outside, not standing next to the furnace. Do not try to shut off the gas valve at the furnace itself or relight a pilot. If your propane tank shutoff is outside and you can reach it without going back in the house, closing it is reasonable, but never delay leaving to do it. No poking around in the burner compartment. That is the utility's job first and ours second.
3. Carbon monoxide is a different smell problem
Carbon monoxide has no smell at all, so a gas odor and a CO problem are two separate things you can have at the same time. If a CO alarm sounds, or if people in the house have headaches, nausea, dizziness or unusual sleepiness that improves outdoors, treat it exactly like a gas leak. Everyone outside, then call 911. Do not silence the alarm and go back to bed. Cracked heat exchangers, a blocked flue, a bird's nest in the vent and a furnace starved for combustion air can all put CO where it does not belong, and none of that shows up as an odor you can trust.
4. Smells that are not a leak
Not every furnace odor means gas. The first burn of the season often smells like hot dust for ten or fifteen minutes and then clears. A faint burnt-plastic whiff can be a dirty filter or something that fell against a duct. A sharp electrical smell that keeps coming back is worth a service call, not a wait-and-see. But rotten eggs or sulfur is the odorant added to natural gas and propane, and that one is never something to sit with. If you are unsure which you are smelling, treat it as gas and make the call. We would rather come out after the utility than instead of them.
5. When to call us
Call us once the utility has been out and either cleared the house or shut the gas off at the meter or tank. That is where our part starts. We work on gas and propane furnaces and dual-fuel systems for homeowners across Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia, including older farmhouses where the ductwork went in long after the house did. We check the gas train, the burners, the heat exchanger and the flue, pressure-test the connections we can reach and tell you plainly whether the furnace should run again. If it should not, we say so. Tell us what you smelled, where and when, and whether a CO alarm went off. It all helps.
Smelling Gas at Home — common questions
Should I turn off my furnace if I smell gas?
Only if the switch is on your way out and you can reach it without delay. Otherwise leave, and let the utility shut the gas off. Getting out and calling matters more than any switch inside the house.
Can I open the windows before I leave?
Do not stop to do it. Leaving quickly with the door unlocked behind you is enough. Opening windows costs time and can mean walking further into a gassy space, and the utility will vent the house properly.
How long until I can go back inside?
When the fire department or gas utility says so, not before. That may be an hour or most of the day depending on the leak. After they clear it, call us for the heating repair the furnace still needs.
How it works
- Step 1
Tell us the symptom
Call or fill in the quote form and describe what changed. Warm air, no air, a smell, a noise, a breaker that keeps tripping. That detail tells us what parts to bring along.
- Step 2
We diagnose on site
We check the thermostat, the electrical side, airflow and the equipment itself before we quote anything. If the problem sits in the ductwork rather than the unit, we say so plainly.
- Step 3
We repair and explain
Most air conditioning repair and heating repair work finishes in one visit. We show you the failed part, explain what caused it, and tell you what to watch for next season.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quote before work starts
Why homeowners call us
- Propane and dual fuelPlenty of homes in our service area run propane heat or a dual fuel setup with a heat pump. We know how those systems switch over and why a bad changeover setting can leave you cold and burning fuel.
- Older houses, added ductworkFarmhouses often got ducts decades after they were built, run through crawl spaces and attics. When the equipment tests fine but rooms still fight each other, we look at the duct runs and static pressure.
- Repair before replacementA failed capacitor, a cracked wire, a clogged drain or a bad control board is a repair, not a new system. We tell you when the equipment is genuinely finished and when it is not.
- Plain talk on the phoneWe ask what the thermostat reads, whether the outdoor unit is spinning, and when it last worked normally. That two minute conversation often shortens the visit and keeps the repair cost down.
- All major brands, gas & electricCarrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem, York and more, as an independent company.
- Straight answersIf a system is not worth repairing, we say so, often right on the phone.
About this guide
Safe checks done and it still misbehaves? That's a real fault
Report what you saw during the checks and we handle the rest. A minute to book.
- A real person answers
- Open 7 days
- Written quotes
- All major brands
- Gas & electric
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