You smell gas when you open the door. But where is it coming from? Learn now which appliances in your apartment might use gas and how you can tell which of yours are gas or electric. What’s the smell added to natural gas? Mercaptan mimics the smell of rotten eggs so you have a heads-up to get help. In addition to checking your appliances, investing in a carbon monoxide detector alarm provides an added back-up for leaks or unvented burned fuel.
How Does Gas Travel Through an Apartment Building?
Gas pipes bring natural gas through the outside meter into the apartment building. Made of steel – black, galvanized, or stainless – or copper or brass, they range from half-inch to one-inch in diameter. For safety purposes, the gas line as a whole, and individual appliances, should contain clearly marked valves that allow you to turn off your gas when needed.
Look for Your Gas or Electric Furnace In a Utility Closet
Forced Air Systems Push Air Through Ducts
Forced air heating systems use furnaces that heat up air – fueled by gas or electricity – and an electric fan that blows warm air through ducts and out of individual room vents. They may also use return vents or fresh air intakes to suck air back into the furnace for heating.
Most gas furnaces built before 2010 have a pilot light that burns continuously. It will show as a blue flame, visible through a window in the front of the furnace. Newer gas furnaces often use an electric ignition switch, so you won’t see anything burning.
Whether or not yours has a pilot light, look for any gas pipe connecting into the furnace itself. Not sure where the furnace lives? Look for a utility closet inside your apartment or behind a laundry set-up. Don’t see one? Check elsewhere on your apartment floor, or venture down into the basement of your building, and look for an industrial furnace that warms the entire building.
Radiator Pipes Contain Hot Water or Steam
Depending on where you live and the age of your building, your apartment might use a boiler and radiator system instead of forced air. Instead of heating air directly, boilers heat water to boiling – hence the name – then push either the water itself or the steam through pipes inside the building.
Radiators feel hot to the touch when the heating system’s on. You’ll notice either a rectangular cluster of vertical pipes, or a panel box with pipes running in and out. Since the boiler heats the entire apartment building, you’d have to look in the basement to locate it.
Hot Water Heater: Identify the Gas Pipe if Yours Is Gas vs. Electric
Like a furnace, a hot water heater might be housed in a utility closet in your individual apartment, or in a communal room or basement area. You’ll notice gas tubing running into your gas hot water heater, and a vent pipe as well. Some units sport blue pilot lights. The valve to shut off the gas to the unit should appear near the heater. Electric hot water heaters hook up to electricity only. Both include water pipes that bring water into and out of the unit.
Stovetops, Also Called Cooktops, Come in Clearly Different Gas and Electric Models
Some apartments sport a range or stove, which combines an oven and stovetop in one. Yours, instead, might separate these into two appliances. A kitchenette might feature only a microwave oven, with or without a stand-alone cooktop. Microwaves always run off of electricity.
Gas powered cooktops feature burning gas flames when on. A raised metal burner holds your cast iron skillet up above the fire. Because gas burners heat up right away, food cooks more quickly than with their electric counterpart. They use either a continually burning pilot light, usually housed under the surface of the stovetop, or an ignition that clicks to light the gas when you turn on an individual burner.
If your burner instead looks like a flat, gray, spiral tube that gradually heats up to glow red, you’ll know that it’s electric powered. Keep in mind that in the same way that these burners take a bit of time to heat up, they also take time to cool down, so keep your fingers away for a while after turning them off.
Flat top cooktops nearly always run off of electricity, with burners housed underneath a smooth surface cover. Unless you have a glass top gas cooktop, that houses the gas burners beneath a transparent glass surface.
Check Plug Size to Know Whether Your Clothes Dryer Is Powered by Gas or Electricity
Gas powered clothes dryers, while they may dry your clothes a bit faster, look nearly identical to electric ones. If you look behind the dryer, which may require pulling it out from the wall, you’ll see the gas connection. The electric plug may be easier to find. Though both gas and electric dryers require electricity, gas dryers only use it to power controls. Gas dryers, therefore, need only a three-prong grounded plug. An electric dryer instead uses a four-prong, high voltage plug.
Look for Electric Elements or Visible Flames to See What Powers Your Oven
Whether your oven comes as a range or stove, combined with a cooktop, or a stand alone in-wall unit, it might be gas or electric. Electric ovens, like electric stovetops, cook food by heating up a gray tube along the bottom, and another along the top, both of which glow red when the oven is heated up. Made of nickel chromium wire encased in steel tubes, manufacturers sometimes install the lower element below the oven floor.
By contrast, gas ovens produce visible flames, which usually can be seen near the back of the bottom of the oven. Like their cooktop counterparts, gas ovens heat up and cool down more quickly than electric ones.
Fireplaces Often Burn Gas but Can Also Be Electric
Few apartments include wood burning fireplaces. You may have a decorative, gas-powered fireplace insert, though, or even an electricity-fueled one. Look for a gas line running visibly or in the wall behind a gas fireplace. Electric fireplace flames tend to be smaller and arranged in a line, versus gas versions with fake logs and flame styles often designed to look more traditional.
Some Common Electric-Only Appliances Include Your Dishwasher, Washing Machine, Air Conditioner, and Microwave Oven
Electricity Powers All Washing Machines
All washing machines run on electricity, not gas.
Your Dishwasher Does Not Use Gas
All dishwashers run on electricity, not gas.
All Microwave Ovens Plug Into Electrical Outlets
All microwave ovens, whether built-in or standalone, run on electricity, not gas.
Does AC Use Gas in an Apartment? It Runs on Electricity, Even If the Furnace Fan Blows the Cool Air
Air conditioners, whether powered through a building-wide compressor, or sitting in your apartment window, run off of electricity. Keep in mind that in a central air conditioning unit, the furnace fan distributes the compressor-cooled air, and furnaces might be gas or electric. This blower fan function of a gas furnace, however, uses only electricity.
What Uses Gas in an Apartment?
| Appliance | Power Source | How to Tell the Difference |
| Air Conditioner | Electric | All electric |
| Clothes Dryer | Gas or Electric | Electrical units have large 3 or 4-prong plugs |
| Dishwasher | Electric | All electric |
| Fireplace | Gas or Electric | Check for gas line |
| Furnace | Gas or Electric | Check for gas line |
| Hot Water Heater | Gas or Electric | Check for gas line |
| Oven | Gas or Electric | Inside heating elements vs gas flames |
| Stovetop/Range | Gas or Electric | Flat burners vs gas flames |
| Washing Machine | Electric | All electric |
What Uses the Most Gas and How to Use Less Gas in an Apartment
Be particularly careful to turn on a venting fan, or open a window, when using your gas stove. What uses the most gas? Use this gas calculator to compare actual usage in your apartment. You’ll notice that a gas fireplace, at 60,000 BTU per hour, leads in gas usage, followed by a gas oven, at 25,000 BTU per hour. Tied for third, broiling with a gas range and using a gas clothes dryer – with or without dryer balls – both burn 20,000 BTU per hour of natural gas.
Save your fireplace for special occasions, fill up your oven when baking to have leftovers for another day, and invest in a clothes rack or a clothesline for less wear and tear on your clothes. Take advantage of your thermostat and make sure it’s turned down for times you’re not home or in bed.
Be grateful for your labor saving appliances and use them safely and wisely.
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