Do cheap natural gas leak sniffers work?

[Bruce Wrenn]

Get rid of it! Ventless units are not worth the trouble they can cause.

Please explain your statement. We have, and have had ventless logs, ventless wall mounted heaters for the last 20 years. Other than my wife doesn't care for the smell (yes they do smell) they haven't been any problems associated with these. We mainly use them for back up heat in a power loss.

[Myk Rian]

Get rid of it! Ventless units are not worth the trouble they can cause.

What trouble would that be. Making wild statements with nothing to back it up is bad form.

[Jerome Stanek]

Get rid of it! Ventless units are not worth the trouble they can cause.

I have had a ventless gas heater for over 30 years and have a co detector near it that has never gone off without a test we cook with a gas range also and have a ventless range hood.

[Roger Feeley]

Thanks to all. I bought a cheap sniffer on amazon. If I was right by the fireplace, I could get it to register at a low level. So I tested near the gas cooktop and it registered more. I Couldn’t get any reading upstairs where the smell was. I did find that if I turned up the burner, there was less uncombusted gas. I had been running it at the lowest level. Now it’s on high. It makes sense that if it’s running on high it would burn more completely.

[Art Mann]

What you are smelling is gas combustion products, not the actual gas. I had a natural gas stove that looked like a wood stove in my last house and it always smelled for a few days after startup in the fall. Eventually, the smell would go away. The NG detector never went off.