Gas leak detection in Evansville, IN

If you smell rotten eggs or sulfur near a gas appliance, treat it as gas until someone proves otherwise. Natural gas has no smell of its own, and Indiana's utility consumer office (OUCC) explains that utilities add mercaptan so a leak can be noticed even at small amounts.

Other signs count too:

• A hiss or whistle at a gas line, the meter, or an appliance connection when nothing is running.
• Bubbles in a puddle or in wet soil along the path of a buried gas line.
• A strip of dead grass that follows the line while the rest of the yard is green.
• A stove flame that burns lazy or yellow after the burner is clean and dry.
• A gas bill that climbs while usage habits haven't changed; compare the usage figure with the same month last year, since winter heating pushes it up.

Indoor leaks tend to start at connections that get bumped: the flex line behind the range, the fitting at the water heater, the hookup on a gas dryer. A smell that shows up only when an appliance fires and then fades is still worth tracing.

Headaches, dizziness, nausea, or unusual tiredness indoors that ease once you step outside are gas leak symptoms to take seriously, especially when they line up with a smell. If people in the house feel that way, it's past detection: go straight to CenterPoint's emergency steps below.

Some look-alikes have plain causes: a rotten-egg smell only from hot-water taps usually comes from inside the water heater tank, not the gas piping. The same smell strongest at a floor drain or a sink nobody uses can be sewer gas through a dry trap. If running water into that drain clears the smell for good, that was the likely cause; if any doubt remains, treat the smell as gas.

For a strong smell, a loud hiss, someone feeling sick, or a line struck while digging, CenterPoint's instructions come first. Leave the area on foot without using your cell phone, starting a car, or doing anything that could make a spark. From a safe distance, call CenterPoint at 800-227-1376 for southwestern Indiana, and 911. The OUCC gives the same order, saying to call once you're away from the property and can no longer smell the leak.

After CenterPoint makes the site safe, responsibility splits at the meter. Under CenterPoint's Indiana South tariff, the customer furnishes and maintains all piping beyond the meter outlet, and the company has no duty to inspect it. The tariff also lets CenterPoint refuse service, or shut it off without notice, when it judges customer piping dangerous.

Gas leak detection picks up from there: a leak CenterPoint traced to your side of the meter, gas left off until the piping is fixed, or quiet signs that never reached emergency level. For those cases, (812) 677-8484 reaches us to trace the leak on the house side of the meter.

When the utility has left the gas off or a faint smell keeps coming back, gas leak detection should answer two things with tools, not noses: whether gas is escaping, and exactly where. It starts with what you noticed, where, and when, since "only when the furnace kicks on" narrows the search fast.

The work follows the piping from the meter to every appliance that burns gas, with the closest look at joints and connections:

• An electronic gas detector moved slowly along pipe and fittings, reading higher near the source.
• A leak-detecting solution brushed on joints, which bubbles where gas escapes. The fuel gas code calls for a noncorrosive fluid for this kind of check.
• A gas pipe pressure test when the signs are vague, which shows whether the whole system holds, including pipe inside walls and floors nobody can reach.
• Detector readings along the route of buried piping, checked against the yard signs above.

Before anyone digs to reach a buried line, call 811: Indiana law requires that call at least two working days ahead, so other utilities get marked.

Once the leaking joint or connector is found, gas leak repair comes next, and the fuel gas code decides what happens after it. If piping is repaired after a pressure test, it must be tested again, though a minor repair may instead get an inspection and a leak check using a noncorrosive leak-detecting fluid.

When gas comes back on after an interruption, the code also calls for a leak check on the piping right away. A worn flex connector is usually replaced rather than patched, and larger runs of damaged pipe become gas installation work.