There was a very strange and peculiar odor coming from the basement last week and I thought the smell was coming from the furnace.
The scent wasn’t particularly like gasoline, but I only smelled the odor in that basement area and I automatically assumed it was an issue with the furnace.
I wasted no time contacting a local heating company to come to the house to evaluate the odor and the furnace. When the service technician found out that there was an odor coming from the basement, he urged me to turn off the furnace until help arrived. The guy sounded absolutely serious, so I shut off the system. I plugged in a very small space heater into the living room where I was sitting and waiting for the technician to arrive. I waited two hours for the service technician to get to the house and then another 30 minutes passed before the technician gave me any indication of the problem. He believed that the odor was not coming from the furnace. He did not find any problems with the furnace at all that would lead him to believe that the furnace was causing the problems. He absolutely apologized for not being able to give me a better answer, but he promised that the issue was not a problem with the furnace. He also suggested performing a full clean up in the basement in order to find the source of the strange and peculiar smell. I don’t have two days off in a row until next weekend. I plan to clean the whole basement at that time. I am hopeful that I will be able to find the source of the smell once and for all.