Last week I noticed that the flames on my LG gas range were more yellow than blue. Normally the flames are completely blue and clean-burning, so this concerned me. After a few phone calls, a utilities service visit and a bit of Google searching, I finally discovered the unexpected problem.

The concern

My main concern with the orange flames is that it indicates that the natural gas is not burning cleanly. My initial guess was that there was an improper gas-to-air ratio. I checked each of the elements, but all of them were seated properly and all of them had a bright orange flame.

The stove still seemed to cook things just fine, and I actually noticed that after about 20 minutes of cooking the flames went back to a more blue hue. However, a few hours later, when I needed to cook again, they would be yellow again.

I even called my local utilities company to report the problem and they sent out a serviceman. He had never seen anything like this before, and was concerned because yellow flames could indicate higher levels of carbon monoxide. The serviceman suggested that I call the stove manufacturer to have the regulator replaced.

The solution

Just before gathering my warranty card and purchase receipts in order to call LG tech support, I decided to do a final Google search to see if there were any answers online. During my search, I found this video and immediately my jaw dropped.

A HUMIDIFIER! That was the cause. A small children’s humidifier on the 2nd floor in my house. My daughter had been congested with a head cold and we had put a humidifier in her bedroom upstairs. After the humidifier had been running for a few hours, the humid air had apparently made its way downstairs and was now affecting the flames on my gas range.

To test the theory that the humidifier was affecting the colour of my gas flames, I turned off the humidifier for a few hours. Sure enough, my flames went back to blue. Then I plugged in the humidifier next to the gas range and turned it back on. Almost immediately, the flames turned to bright orange! (See my pictures below)

I would have never believed this if I didn’t experience it myself, but having a humidifier in your house can definitely affect the colour of your flames on a natural gas stove.





Please note that the above pictures were not modified in any way, and all settings, including white balance were manually configured to the exact same settings. Thanks to davespec25 for posting his video on YouTube and leading me to the solution.