Weird smell, what can it be?

[Littlepeahead]

I know I post some stupid stuff on here but this is actually a serious question.

There is a very odd smell in my living room. As soon as I come downstairs in the morning I can smell it, just in there, not coming from something mouldy lurking in the fridge or kitchen drain but I just cannot find the source.

It's not pleasant, like something has died! I had it last summer for a few weeks then it went away again but now it's back so must be heat related.

I've checked behind furniture, even looked in case something has got inside the sofa as I know the cats sometimes bring live mice at this time of year and last year I thought it might be that but I can't find anything.

It's driving me mad.

The house is a 1980s end terrace, not an old place. No chimney for dead birds to get trapped.

Anyone got any bright ideas what on earth could be causing it as I really don't like living somewhere that has the faint whiff of a morgue!

(And before someone says it, Mr LPH is alive and well!)

[Bibio]

check under your patio.. lol

could be drain seepage starting to turn due to the hotter weather.

[Littlepeahead]

It doesn't smell like drains though. I know online it's hard to describe a smell but we are upwind of the sewage plant and on the rare occasions the wind changes the smell can reach us and it's like the portaloo city at Glastonbury. It's not that sort of poo-ey smell.

This is more like a cross between the medicinal small of a hospital and the slaughterhouse. I'm seriously starting to wonder if the previous owner built my extension on something dodgy.

[Bibio]

c'mon LPH you should know that smell having been brought up on a farm.

[Kenzie]

You haven't had a Pigeon drop down the chimney and die have you? Most are vented and could seep into the room.

[Biker Biggles]

You haven't had a Pigeon drop down the chimney and die have you? Most are vented and could seep into the room.

You didnt read the OP did you?
Take a detention and 100 lines---"No chimney for dead birds to get trapped"
If you want to be spanked that will be extra.:cool:

[Littlepeahead]

No, there's no chimney. I once had a shallot fall down the back of the washing machine and that smelled bloomin' awful but you kind of follow your nose until you find the source, and bingo, there's the mouldy rancid culprit and the minute you remove it the smell is gone. This isn't like that, I've gone round the room trying to find the source and it's just in the air. It isn't the paint, it isn't cat pee, it isn't like rotten cabbage.

We've got solid concrete floors so it's not like we even think something could have crawled under the floor and died like a rodent. And it only seems to happen now the weather is hot, we've lived here 6 summers and this is the second year it's happened.

Stu being a bricklayer said if it was in the cavity between the walls we'd smell it in the garage as that's where the air brick is, but we think the walls are insulated anyway.

[Kenzie]

You didnt read the OP did you?
Take a detention and 100 lines---"No chimney for dead birds to get trapped"
If you want to be spanked that will be extra.:cool:

Where did that sneak in from? Read it twice before posting!

[Specialone]

End terrace, damp?
I'm putting my money on drainage, seen it loads, clay pipe falls to bits.

[Littlepeahead]

I was wondering that but I've had old houses with damp and they smell sort of, well, damp. Like wet socks. I know you've worked on loads of places Phil, might damp under a house permeate up through the foundations in this way but not obviously smell like wet socks as we have a decent damp proof course so it's not the sort of thing you get when the plaster starts flaking off.

[Specialone]

Yep, if a clay pipe is running under the house and starts leaking, it could creep up into the concrete, I doubt your house will have a dpm under the screed or concrete unless it's been done fairly recently.

Actually, the house where I'm currently building a side extension, the owners years ago had their kitchen floor replaced under the insurance for exactly the above, it had been leaking years and slowly washed the soil away, causing the concrete floor to subside.

Lift the carpets (if you have them) and look for any darker patches, or look for any cupping or joints opening on wooden floors.

[Littlepeahead]

Hm, now you come to mention it we have a small porch on the front of the house and there is a crack where it joins the house in the plaster inside. Directly above the bay window the sill has shifted by about half an inch too. Could that suggest the front of the house has been moving if the ground underneath has been shifting?

[Specialone]

Possibly, the ground moving can also cause the clay pipes to crack in the first place if enough.
Bays are notorious for shifting though, they never used to be built well enough, too much weight, not enough structure.

[Bibio]

do you have Norwegians living next door...

[Littlepeahead]

No, but they have put a bloody great gnome out the front which I'm not happy about.

[Bibio]

is it a carnivorous gnome...

[andrewsmith]

They're Norwegians and have opened Surströmming

[Bibio]

before you go ripping carpets up and getting jack hammers out.

is the room an extension on the house?

[Littlepeahead]

No the living room is part of the original house, Bodger Pete the previous owner, built an extension but that is our garage with a bedroom above. The garage smells of garagey stuff, motorbikes and bacon if I've had the extractor fan on, not zombie breath. I should point out for anyone thinking of visiting this isn't an overwhelming stench like open graves, but it is annoying!

[Mrs DJ Fridge]

I doubt it is anything dead, unless the cats are regularly bringing in dead things and putting them in the same place each time, but you seem to have ruled that out. If it was something dead it would have either rotted away or totally dried out. I know nothing about drains, only dead animals because we were always being presented with them by the cats and dogs on the farm when I grew up.

[BanannaMan]

Could be dead mice if there is somewhere they can get under the floor.
Mom gets killed and the babies die in the nest. Terrible smell for a weeks unless you can find/get to them to get rid of.
Right time of year for that.

[pegasus]

Just my tuppence worth,

Is your room painted?

If so, when was the last time you painted it and can you remember what type of paint it was?

There was something on Telly last week about some paints smelling like sour milk especially in hotter weather.

Just a thought

p

[dizzyblonde]

Just my tuppence worth,

Is your room painted?

If so, when was the last time you painted it and can you remember what type of paint it was?

There was something on Telly last week about some paints smelling like sour milk especially in hotter weather.

Just a thought

p


Not just a pretty face, aye :smt115

[Littlepeahead]

It was painted about 3 years ago. Dulux on the walls and woodwork. Water based, which means that the old yellowy varnish on the woodwork is all coming through on the banister making the woodwork look like I live in a house with a heavy smoker. But if you get up close to the wood and have a sniff the smell isn't any worse. Stu said the smell reminds him of the hallway at the sheltered housing his nan lived in - the old folks there were not at the nappies stage, but the place had that vaguely institutional hospital smell.

As for the cats and their mice, I know they aren't stashing them anywhere as when they do get off their lazy furry bums and catch something they are so pleased with themselves they either lay out the dead mouse in the middle of the floor as a gift for my arrival home, or bring it in alive and present it to me with much yowling and showing off.

[Amadeus]

My parents had a smell in their house which smelt very much like a gas leak. Called gas board, they came out and said it did it smell like a gas leak despite it being in an area where there was no gas.
Eventually found a dead mouse.

Hope it's something like that rather than a broken pipe.

[Jayneflakes]

Check your fruit and veg rack, a rotten potato can produce an alarming smell that I have not encountered since my days at university. Other things to look for are unwashed tramps living in the cupboard under the stairs. This may sound rediculous, but a mentally ill aunt of mine had this problem for a while. It did take some sorting out.

Do you have vent bricks above drains/soakaways/cat toilets etc? If you do you may try blocking the vent up, but being careful to ensure that you still have some ventilation.

[SvNewbie]

Worst smell I've encountered in a flat was the Fridge drip tray. Smelled like a strong and repulsive parmesan cheese. Worth checking it out, though I'd imagine it would be reasonable localised to the kitchen.

[SvNewbie]

Actually, it was between that and the dead mouse I found underneath the hot water tank.

[dizzyblonde]

When I was a student(somewhere in the depths of time) I lived in an old listed house, which had been used as bedsits but were being converted into self contained flats.
Anyway, there was this young chap who used to really annoy everyone with very loud music, and falling over drunk after a night on the tiles.




One night he left his flat door open, and was sparko on his sofa with a half eaten kebab by his side. The 'committee' of residents decided to play a little game of hide the raita....you know that little bag of yoghurt and cucumber.


We hid it behind his radiator, and was accidentally forgotten about. He kept complaining of this stinky cheese odour in his flat, and tbh, he was a tart so smelling it above the aftershave, it must have been rotten.


Check behind your radiators :rolleyes:

[Littlepeahead]

Ha ha, I don't have radiators!

Brand new fridge a couple of weeks ago so definitely not that. Mr LPH often complains about rancid cheese in the fridge, he says rancid, he means 'ripe', and still probably a week away from my idea of being edible.

Yesterday the smell had got a bit better though not disappeared completely. 3 things had changed so of course I can't pinpoint the cause.

1) I scrubbed the bottom 3 stairs of the stair carpet in case something had been spilled on it I wasn't aware of by the nephews while running round the room.

2) I moved the armchair into the conservatory as that was located in the area where the smell is strongest - but the smell hasn't now appeared in the conservatory so I can't think it is that something has been spilled onto the chair and made that smell.

3) We've had very heavy rain - so if Phil's theory on drains drying out/cracking is correct then the heavy rain may have made a difference. There are two man hole covers outside that living room window suggesting that the drains run under the house in that area.

Maybe Pete the previous owner really did shove a couple of bodies under there when he re-laid the drive - I mean we always joke about these things but my friend Dinah went missing when we were 18 and years later her body turned up under Peter Tobin's patio.