Gosh you scared me, Nat! I agree - gas is nothing to mess around with. If you even suspect that you have a leak, you get yourself and Trout out and then call. The smell that they add to it is like rotten eggs, so unmistakable if you ever smell it once. Gas companies would rather that you be safe than sorry. We have a gas furnace here, and a couple of years ago when they were doing it's annual inspection, the serviceman said that he thought we had a crack in the firebox. Not a worry, he said, just keep an eye on it and think about replacement soon. He was very unprofessional the whole time he was here. I asked hubby what he said after he left (they were down in the basement) - he told me and I had a fit. We called a local gas furnace company and they sent two trucks out (this was in the evening by now) right away and inspected the furnace from top to bottom with scopes inside etd. They said no cracks, they saw a mark from the welding during manufacture that they thought he could have been referring to . Anyway, they said that if the serviceman suspected a crack, he should have shut the furnace down right away and that what he did was illegal. We complained to the company and my FIL who knows the owner complained to his friend - long story short, the serviceman was fired for negligence. We could have been killed if there actually had been a crack. The company that came out and scoped our furnace was wonderful - they were prepared to pull a furnace off another job that wasn't urgent to install that night if necessary (it ws 30 below outside so heat was vital). Anyway, that's my nightmare with a gas furnace. Oh - BTW - we ended up replacing the furnace anyway, but didn't have to do it that night on an emergency basis (did it a number of months later). I just didn't trust it after that and it was 16 years old and only a mid-efficiency so went with a high. You can't mess around with that stuff.
