We had a little bit of excitement around here yesterday – when I went down to the basement to use the printer while Molly was napping, I smelled a distinct odour of rotten eggs. Further investigation (including me braving the spiders and centipedes to crawl under my desk and sniff the main drain stack) yielded no apparent cause, so I went back upstairs and asked my good friend Google what the recommended course of action was under the circumstances. Google said, “You idiot, call 9-1-1! And don’t touch anything electrical because slightest spark could cause your house to explode!”

Still feeling that that might be overkill (but with the smell getting stronger) I called the non-emergency fire department number and the nice lady who answered said basically the same thing, adding that I should also get Molly and wait outside. So I called 9-1-1 and explained the situation, woke Molly up and got her a banana and a sweater and we went outside to wait for the nice firemen to arrive!

©PicklesINK 2012

The truck showed up a few minutes later and the very understanding firefighters assured me that I had made the right call <—- see what I did there? and went in with their CO readers, noted that there was definitely an odour, and tested the house from top to bottom (well, I guess technically from bottom to top) and side to side.

©PicklesINK 2012

The chief stayed outside with Molly and me and filled out a report. He also asked me lots of questions about whether anyone in the house had been feeling ill or headachy today or yesterday; I had to admit that actually I had but I had also drunk fairly strong 2 gin&tonics last night so it was not entirely unexpected. He laughed and said, “Yep, that would do it!”

Molly was pretty quiet (she was not impressed when I woke her up) but did tell him that she had a fire-coat too and that Ben and daddy were going to be really sad to miss the fire truck. I made him laugh pretty hard with, “I hate to think I’ve brought you out here for nothing, but I figured if it was a gas leak and my house exploded, boy would my face be red.” He said, “Yeah, a lot of things would be red!”

Molly’s eye view ©PicklesINK 2012

They checked everything and concluded that there were no dangerous gasses so it was probably a plumbing issue, but did bring me down to the basement to show me a potential water heater venting issue that we should fix before the winter (now that’s service above and beyond!). The smell dissipated over the rest of the afternoon so the issue seems to have been temporary but the moral of the story is of course, if you smell gas, call 9-1-1 because it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

~ karyn

PS – When we went back inside, because I’m a jerk, I emailed the pictures to Ian with no explanation…heheheheh.