Posts Tagged ‘propane leaks’

This picture is Tink, asleep on a pillow.  Tink was one of my first rescued ferrets and is no longer with me.  She had adrenal cancer when she came to me, and was very malnourished and weak.  She improved with food and a safe indoor house and for six months I thought we were winning, we began to think her a good surgery candidate.  Then I began having trouble waking her up in her favorite napping place on a low shelf by the kitchen broom closet.  And she plunged into multiple organ failure.  And at first, I didn’t know why.

I put up this bit of family pet history because this week I thought history was going to repeat itself.  Another ferret, Ivy, is similarly frail –but cancer free so far. And she suddenly has been extremely sleepy and in the same broom closet.  So, Thursday, as I filled a dish I was shocked to smell propane in said closet.  We had a leak there before, you see, there where the pipe comes up to take propane to the kitchen stove.  The last leak was right before Tink’s precipitous plunge from recovery to death.

I called my propane company, they were unhappy to send a man out.  And when he called to say he was coming, he announced “It probably isn’t propane at all.”  What the hell was it then, I asked—since it smelled JUST like what comes out of the stove if you don’t trigger the lighting device.  “Oh, it could be anything.” he airily proclaimed.  It went downhill at warp speed from then.  Let it be written (to quote a fun Shakespearean romp): He is an ass!  A patronizing one at that.  He came, he tested and announced no leak.  He left.  A man who resolutely did not find what he was not looking for at all…..an ass!

We turned on the stove and smelled propane again.  I called someone else.  We learned that the propane guy, while he did a pressure test, did the very minimum one and with very insensitive instrumentation at that.  I spent $250 I could not easily bear to part with for parts and labor for over two hours. I found out that the flexible piping put through the wall of the closet to my stove was not “code” and those flex pipes can tear easily as you move the stove in and out if they are rubbing and being tugged against walls.  I learned that the flex pipes might have a tiny tear and leak that does not leak all the time, but only when that section is fully extended so it does not pressure itself closed, for instance.  We had the pipe replaced with rigid pipe through the wall and a new undamaged flex pipe only behind the stove itself.  We had the stove and all regulators checked out just to cover every base.  We cooked lunch.  No propane smell.

Propane is heavier than air.  It will settle along the floors if a leak develops, so you might not smell it at once unless you get on your hands and knees.  Ferrets are AT floor level when released from the cage to play.  Propane is not particularly toxic, however, it does suffocate any creature breathing it in for any period of time because of the way it is heavier than air.  If you have small pets and heat or cook with propane…and the pets are suddenly hard to wake (or gods forbid, found dead!) do look to your propane lines, devices and tank pressure.  Be safe!