The propane system in my parents house is bit old now. I was often worried about the safety. My dad prefers to old fashion, using soap and water, but it creates a mess in the house. After done a lot of researches, I found this one. It is good rugged and well built, quite decent looking for the price, much better than those under $30 that you can find on Amazon. It does not cost you a hundred dollars or more, but it does the job. Guess what? We did find a leak in the basement. Initially, we did not smell a thing, but using this tool, I found a pipe joint where it is hard to apply soap solution. To confirm it, we called the Gas company and they responded very quickly and fixed it. Now my dad loves this little tool, though he is still willing to use his soap solution to double check.

I would gladly recommend this to anyone who needs a handy and inexpensive tool at home to check their pipes and connections. It comes with 3 AA batteries ready for use, which definitely adds scores. If you are not sure what you have found, please do ask your gas company or plumber to double check.

One thing I would remind that this is not a gas level monitor, but a leak detector. It is designed for plumbers, appliance technicians and DIYers who need to locate a gas leak and/or to verify that there are no leaks after working on gas plumbing or appliances. It's not intended as a continuous duty gas safety monitor. There's no readout of gas level in PPM, so there's no way to determine the actual level of gas present. If you need to locate a leaking fitting in a gas line, this is the perfect device. If you're looking for a gas monitor for your basement, or for OSHA compliance, this device isn't what you need. As long as you're not expecting the device to do things that it's not designed to do, it's a great instrument.

We bought a camper and on our first few camping trips, the propane/carbon monoxide detector In the camper would occasionally go off (alarm), but my husband couldn't find any leaks. I did a lot of research and found out that the detectors used in the campers can go bad after about five years (ours was only months old) or they just randomly go off. According to an expert on our camper, the detectors can go off because of dirty laundry, cooking odors, dog odors, or anything. We had none of those things. We put our dirty laundry in ou tow vehicle, we never cook inside the camper and we have one tiny, non-smelly dog. The expert recommended just disconnecting the propane/CO detector. That seemed the exact wrong thing to do to me. Our camper has a propane stove, water heater and furnace, so it seemed to me that there was a leak somewhere. I was occasionally getting a small whiff of propane, so we ordered this propane detector. My husband found a leaky valve under the stove where the connector wasn't quite tight enough. It apparently came from the factory that way.

Great little sniffer! Had a tankless hot water heater installed in the basement. Every now and then I would smell "gas" and thought it was just sewer gas coming up from the floor drain. (we had mainline sewer problems) Once we got the sewer and drain line issues resolved I STILL was smelling gas occasionally. Purchased this to check the gas lines to the furnace and the tankless hot water heater and found a small leak on the gas line connection to the new water heater. Freaked me out! And couldn't sleep until it was repaired. Got two estimates to fix the issue and was quoted $375 by one company. Decided to invite the original installers to come "fix their work" for free. Guys were impressed when they saw this device found the (their) leak. Great... Now fix this mistake and get the h- out of my house. You almost killed us! Obviously I double checked their work and found no more gas leaks! WHEEW!

I was surprised to find a gas leak detector at this price. It is very sensitive and unless calibrated properly may give a false reading. The instructions are a bit light on how to use and the video is not very helpful. I took one star off for that. Some of the other reviews provide tips for use. The unit does not indicate how much gas only that gas or some other volatile vapor maybe present. To calibrate (actually a wrong term as it suggest it is set to a numeric value) the instruction state to take it into fresh air turn it all the way up, turn on and wait 20 seconds for it to stop squealing. That's not correct. My unit continued to squeal. You have to adjust it back down until it just click, it's like a geauga counter. Also when I took it into my garage it started clicking faster because I have lots of paints and thinners that give off a trace of volatile vapors. That's how sensitive it is. But when you get near a leaking gas source it squeals like crazy. I probably won't use it often but it's good to have and I'm sure my neighbors will want to borrow it someday.

I had a commercial stove that had a leak and was stinking up the kitchen. I never found the -exact- source of the leak, but I verified a slew of things that weren't the problem, which was more valuable than it sounds (on a commercial stove there are a LOT of fittings that could have been leaking). I was able to pin the leak down to the valve and a couple of fittings at the inlet that were inexpensively replaced as a group.