funky smell

[washerboy]

Your thoughts please:.....for the past few weeks when I use my gas stove I get this smell...for the lack of a better term..it sorta smells like burnt desiel...the flame is blue on all 4 burners and oven...I turned all the burners and oven on over the weekend and put a carbonminoxcide (sp) detector beside the stove..it registered 0....funny thing is..I dont always smell the funky smell. I thought if the flame burned yellow/orange that meant trouble..I'm wondering could it be something the gas company is putting in the gas???? I have a floor furnace..but it's vented to the outside so I dont know if it smells funny or not. My stove is a 1941 Roper.

 

[toggleswitch2]

~I dont always smell the funky smell. I thought if the flame burned yellow/orange that meant trouble.

Blue flames is a good sign. Yellow/orange flames ususally means insuffuient combustion air (both primary - sucked into the venturi orifice- and secondary, from the flames burning in open-air). Ordinalry there will be more some yellow tips with propane(bootled)gas. but not so with methane(natural) gas.

In my mother's area there was a great deal (read: excessive amount) of the chemical used to give natural gas an odor. Pilot lights left a white pwdery coating on metal applaince parts. Perhaps variiations in this level of chemical is what you smell.

Also you do not state whether you have propane or methane. Often propane has a "marshy/swampy" smell to it.

Let us not forget that wiping down the stovetop with chemicals/saops/detergetns sometimes leaves behind a residue that smells when heated.

Also if someone in the house is using volatille chemcials (turpentine, paint thinners, oil-based paint, acetone [nail-polish remover] these things stink when burned by a flame or pilot light. And of course *KABOOM* in large quantites.

Hope this helps.

 

[seeitrun2006]

Check for soot build up

My Dad worked for a gas company until he retired. He use to work on gas appliances.

Check for soot build up on the oven pilot light and the burners pilot light. Sometimes for no apparent reason soot tends to collect on the those areas. My Dad get calls from little old women smelling something. He would come out clean out all the soot and the smell went away.

One time he was called to a house to check out their gas stove. The owner (who had 4 or 5 kids and dirt poor) complained that anything cooked in the oven tasted funny. My Dad took out the broiler pan in the bottom and discoverd a gigantic brown/wharf race had crawled under there and died.

Hopefully there not a dead rat under your stove! Just kidding!

 

[washerboy]

thanks

Toggles...now that you mention it..I did paint the bedroom..I used oil and latex paint.. But I dont think I got paint any where in or around the stove. I am a clean freak (better put..I'm OCD about it). I'm forever spraying the stove top down with 409..Also I noticed some "soot" last night in the broiler pan..I thought it was from my teenager baking a pizza...but the smell isnt that smell one gets when a pie spills over in the oven...We have natural gas here...I've never heard it called methane...I thought that was what came out out ones rear end or the sewer main...rural areas have bottled gas... so long as I'm not endanger of gassing my child or self I'm guess everything is okay. Seems like every year there's always at least one report of people in a home dieing from carbonmoxide..I did'nt want that to happen at my house..I know I'm sounding like a blue hair worry wart. Thanks!!!

 

[toggleswitch2]

AHA!

Anywhere in the house and such chemicals WILL smell when burnt/consumed or even interact with the flames of a gas stove!

 

[toggleswitch2]

ANY gas stove with an oven on at 350*F (180*C +/-)for an hour or more produces enough poisonous gases to be --even slightly-- not good for ya.

Best to have an exhaust fan or hood of some type that moves these byproducts of combustion outdoors.

And crack a window open at all times when gas is flowing. (This applies to farts, too!).