I know that I’m not the only person who is a little worried when they smell a strange odor in their house when one wasn’t present to begin with.
This can happen with a number of different factors, with none other than water damage being one of the worst.
It’s a scary reality when you have water leaking from an upstairs pipe and you don’t even know about it until the water starts swelling large sections of drywall and other wood. If you have pets, sometimes those weird odors come from them urinating or defecating in unknown places when your back is turned. Then after so much time, the odor just gets worse and worse. One of the most common household odors comes from an unexpected source. Who would have thought that the central HVAC system would be a place for common odors, but it’s true. People will run their furnace for the first time in months and then there’s a weird burnt odor present. That furnace odor is completely normal and is simply the result of dirt and spores settling on the coils during the extended periods of time in which the furnace is turned off. Then when the furnace is turned on again to use daily, that odor will be present for a few hours until you can burn it off and start from scratch again. A heating system consisting of radiant heated flooring or other radiant sources will bypass the bad odors in the furnace. These odors are associated with fan-forced furnaces, regardless of whether or not they’re electric, gas, or oil powered.