Gas Smell Coming From Oven

Posted by kirk on Feb 1, 2012 in Building a Home, Condo Renovation | 0 comments

After we purchased our new condo we quickly decided the old oven needed to go and it needed to be replaced by a new oven.  When we pulled the old oven out, the only replacement option was to go with an all gas range – there was no electrical output to power a stove.

When our new range arrived we hooked it up, turned on the stove and wa-la things worked great.  Well it worked great until we turned on the oven portion.  After just a few seconds we detected an off smell and turned off the oven.  Later on we cooked a batch of brownies and the strange smell filled the house, so we finished the brownies with some windows open regardless of the cold winter air.  Then like any smart man would do, I went to Google and searched for something along the lines of “When I turn on my gas oven I get a strange smell.”  What I read there cautioned me that I should have no smell, that all of the gas should be burning up, and if I did have any smell there was a problem with my oven. It may be unlevel, the glo plug may not be burning all the gas… everything was saying the oven was faulty.  So we called and the Maytag Man came – here’s what I learned.

After five seconds of the oven being on, he asked “is that what you are smelling?”  He seemed slightly irritated when asking the question, and I replied “yes!”  Turns out the smell was Carbon Monoxide and he gets lots of calls at this time of year for that smell. What I once thought was odorless (Wikipedia says it is odorless! Middle school home economics taught me it was odorless…) actually does have an odor.  He then turned on a burner without a flame so it would release only unburned gas for me to smell.  The small of unburned gas was very different and distinct – he described it as almost a rotten egg smell, and that is a good description of unburned natural gas.