DTE vs. CenterPoint

Believe it or not, we had to have someone from the gas company over to both our condo in Michigan and our house in Texas recently. I don't know what it is about us and natural gas leaks, but I don't like it.

A few days before Jacob and I left for Houston last month, we noticed a faint smell of gas in the laundry room of the condo. I hesitated calling DTE Energy because the odor was not very strong. I decided to call, though, since we would be out of town for several weeks and would not be around to check it on a daily basis. The technician arrived a short time after we contacted the company and could not have been nicer. He stressed over and over that if I ever smelled gas to be sure to call DTE. No big deal. No charge. No problem. By the way, the tech guy did find a leak in one of our pipe connections and fixed it. He repeated that I should never feel bad about calling them. Ever. Always better to be safe than sorry.

Fast forward to last weekend. Jim and I had been smelling gas near the meter in the backyard of our Houston house for a couple of days. Since the odor was slight, we ignored it and hoped that it would go away. It didn't. I remembered what our friendly DTE employee had told me, so we called CenterPoint Energy to come check it out. The technician arrived and pretty much told us that our meter was fine, nothing was leaking, they often emit small amounts of gas, blah, blah. He proceeded to tell us stories about people who overreact to "normal" smells and hinted that we may just be that type. He was packing up his things when Jim opened the wooden gate to our pool equipment area and a gassy odor whooshed out towards us. We had the pool heater on at the time and the tech guy decided that, hmmm, maybe something was leaking after all. His sniffer wand did indeed detect gas coming out of the exhaust on the pool heater, so he turned off that gas line and recommended that we have a pool repair company look at it.

The pool guy came to the house on Thursday. Even though the smell of gas was definitely present, he assured me that it was "normal," and all was well. He never even opened any doors or panels on the heating unit until we switched it to the off position and a gassy stench came spewing out of the exhaust. At that point he could not deny that something was wrong, but since it was late in the day, he promised to return on Friday to service the heater. When he did come back, he found some gunk in the orifice, cleaned it, and assured me that we were good to go. The pool heater now only smells gassy when it is turned on and turned off, but not while it is running. The pool guy insists that it is perfectly "normal" and everything is fine, but I intend to keep my eye on things around here. My nose knows.