Gas odor on 2nd Street?

bookistan

We smelled a strong gas order about 8:30 a.m. today (Thurs. May eight). The fire departrment came and investigated for about 2 minutes then left. Did anyone else smell this?

booklaw

No, but... when we first moved into our brownstone many years ago, we intermittently smelled a very strong gas odor. We called the gas company several times and by the time they got around to sending someone, the odor was gone, and they went away.

Eventually we called a plumber instead, and he got there quickly enough to smell the odor. He diagnosed the problem as leakage from the old gas lighting pipes buried in the ceiling of every room in the house. He said the house could explode at any time. He immediately turned off our gas service, cut the gas lines off at the basement, and then installed new gas lines up to our stoves and our clothes dryer.

We've never smelled gas since, so I believe he was probably correct.

If you smell the odor again, you might want to call your plumber, or ours (John Hlad).