Charlie:
Beth , in Copperfield, has one for you. She says, “I have a … Speaking of fires, a burning smell in my house, and it comes and goes, but is more often than not smelly in varying degrees. Electricians say it is not an electrical problem, and I’ve had the chimney cleaned, so I know that’s not it. The smell has been here a few months.” She says, “I had lightning damage in April, but never found any evidence of a direct hit.” She wants to know your suggestions, Tom, on maybe figuring out what’s causing this kind of … You know, it’s that uniquely kind of electrical smell she’s talking about.
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Tom:
I understand. Obviously if it’s not electrical, and if the lightning strike was in April and it’s only been happening a few months, then it didn’t happen right after the lightning strike. I’m going to have to go by what she wrote there, so I doubt it has anything to do with it. She’s trying to find a reason why.
Charlie:
Sure.
Tom:
I don’t know, Charlie. It’s the smell question.
Charlie:
You love the smell questions.
Tom:
I don’t know. Could it be a dead animal? Could it be a lot of different things? A lot of things have really bad smells. Could it be a dirty evaporator coil, so when her air conditioner comes on, it’s causing a problem? We just found one of those problems over at one of our campuses at HCC where the evaporator coil was really contaminated. They cleaned it up, it was fine.
Charlie:
If we were in the middle of some cooler weather, I might wonder did you just turn your furnace on for the first time?
Tom:
Could be the furnace, right. I don’t know. Evaporator coils in air conditioning systems can get rancid in there if you don’t really maintain them in a good cleaning sometimes. An evaporator coil can solve that. I don’t know, but it could be all of these different things.
Charlie:
Maybe start with a visit from ….
Tom:
A burning smell, it could be …
Charlie:
Absolute Comfort Air look at your system, check it out.
Tom:
Absolute Comfort Air. Well, it’s furnace time anyway, so it’s time to do it. Another thing people get, if you have a chimney that you’ve used regularly, you don’t smell it in the summer, but when the winter comes and the cold air, even though it’s not super cold, drops down that chimney, you’ll smell the remnants of a fireplace.
Charlie:
It’s winter in Texas. It’s dropped under sixty, but the air still drops.
Tom:
Actually, I’m kind of enjoying it.
Charlie:
Yeah, me too.
Tom:
The weather’s nice.