What smells like gas but probably isn't gas?

QuackDuck · 2012-12-07T17:03:00+00:00

Hi everyone, I hope you don't mind my first post being a request forhelp, but I've been trawling the internet for days and read about everywebsite/forum post there is about gas smells in buildings.I live in a 140 year-old(ish) granite building that at some point hasbeen converted into four flats. Because it was all one big house before,we do get noise and cooking smells etc travelling between floors.Anyway, about 4 weeks ago now we noticed a gas-like smell in thecommunal ground floor hallway, and we also seemed to get 'clouds' of itmoving through our (first floor) kitchen and hallway, above where theground floor smell was. It dispersed quickly when we opened the communalhallway window, though.A week later the smell was coming more frequently (3 out of 7 days) andour neighbour called the Emergency Gas line. We had a couple of SGN guyscome out and test everything. Unfortunately the smell had mostlydispersed by the time they arrived and they detected nothing after athorough examination. A week later we called them out again, and more or less the same thinghappened - smell had mostly gone by the time they came, and again theytested all along the gas pipes, everyone's boilers, cookers, etc -everything they could think of. They found nothing, and said it couldn'tbe gas, it's just something else with a similar smell.Another two weeks on and we're still getting the smell, although notevery day. It's almost always there when we come home in the evening,and seems to disperse as we open a window (or when everyone else in thebuilding comes home and fresh air gets in). No-one is usually in thebuilding during the day, and our boilers are not usually on either (yetit appears anyway). Once the smell disperses, it doesn't reappear duringthe night or early morning (also a time when no fresh air gets into thebuilding).I imagine that it's a small amount of some sort of gas (not necessarilynatural gas since it tested negative) getting in and building up duringthe day, as it does go away...

Dec 07, 2012 64 Replies

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The Natural Philosopher 8 years ago

Probably outgaqssing from the plastics (melamine?) used in the cabinets. Like a dead mouse, in time the smell will go

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Cynic 8 years ago

The smell from the Granox rendering plant was quite entertaining.

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Dan S. MacAbre 8 years ago

We had a smell of gas that took a long time to track down. Even the British Gas bloke said the loss was too small to investigate, but the faint smell in one corner of the room was annoying. I knocked out some plaster where it had been chased into the wall, and at the top, I could see where the pipe bend had been hammered so that it could more easily be plastered over (it would otherwise have stuck proud of the wall). Over the years, the plaster had corroded the weakened (and unprotected) copper, until it eventually started to leak. It was only a tiny leak, but the mercaptan is, of course, very noticeably smelt.

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Brian Gaff 8 years ago

When I was young in and around SW London. you got things like Strong smell of beer, coffee in Putney, many places smelled of gas and one particular place smelled like candles. Smells can be very evocative.

Brian

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