General Tools Natural Gas Detector Pen

I've been in the heating trade for 35 years now & have seen a lot of examples of "tradeline" gas leak detectors. There were always the gas utility testers that were also far too expensive to purchase & keep calibrated; the first break from that that I recall was the Tif8800, which was reasonably priced and calibrated in the field. Setting aside the sucky nature of its rechargeable batteries, if calibrated by its instructions it was wildly oversensitive & could literally be tripped by breathing into the sensor. Last time I checked, I wasn't exhaling methane.Fast forward to my recent need for a leak detector, I decided to get a couple of different "current tradeline" options, and a couple of cheap Amazon alternatives. One of them totally sucked (it mimicked the tif8800, unsurprisingly). This is the other one - within a day, I found 3 gas leaks that I did not smell (all of which were trivially corrected). Within a week I had found 6 total. I recommended to my boss that they get one of these for every field worker, and I suspect it'll happen because of the price.This is not an LEL detector, far from it. We don't carry LEL detectors, can't afford the price of admission. If you've got a gas smell, we're going to use soap bubbles to prove a leak, or use one of the tradeline options out there for sniffers. One, the UEI100 being an example that I bought, uses field calibration like the Tif8800, but is much improved in that it's less prone to false positives & its rechargeability appears to be vastly improved. The other style can be exemplified by the Klein (which I also bought) which is not adjustable like the UEI, but has a high & low sensitivity setting & has never shown a propensity for false alarms.This is like the latter style, set on low sensitivity. No false alarms, and it detects leaks you can't smell. Not the right instrument if you're dealing with a person who is hypersensitive to ethyl mercaptan (the natural gas odorant in our area - they're different, check with your gas utilities) - you'll want either one of those "false-alarm-capable" sniffers, or getting the gas utility involved. But for the field worker, this thing is genius! It weighs nothing & fits into a pocket that I wasn't already using on my toolbag.Five stars just for the form-factor, and the fact that it doesn't suck.