Ammonia smell coming from drains?

Jane98

Hi,

I am currently living in a rented house for the past 4 months and the past month we have noticed a strong ammonia type smell every time we shower upstairs and it's worse if 2 people have showers in the morning.

The house was built as a bungalow in the 1990s and converted upstairs to a dormer around 2006. It was built by the previous owner himself and I really wonder was the drainage system taht was put in day 1 whether that is now insufficient for the 6 of us living in the house now but hey I'm no plumber.

Before I go back to the landlord I am wondering can anyone out there shed any light on possible causes. By the way we have used plenty of Mr Muscle drain cleaner down the showers but that hasn't helped.

Calahonda52

Where exactly does the smell occur?
How many bathroom/showers are there?
How many wash hand basins in each bathroom/en-suite upstairs.

Is the sewer pipe from the bathroom vented up outside over th eaves?

Did it start before the shed loads of Mr Muscle?

My shot at the problem here is as follows:

The wash hand basins and showers are on the one outlet upstairs and the flow in the outlet pipe is sucking the water out of the wash hand basin trap, allowing smells back into the rooms..

The other one I have seen is one trap for both beyond the shower.
As always am happy to be wrong.
However the more intel u provide on the actual plumping the the better the real experts can help

miezekatze

I'm no plumber and don't know anything about plumbing, but I did have the same problem in a rented (modern) apartment I used to live in. In our case the water in the shower trap was sucked out whenever you flushed the toilet, you could hear a gurgling noise coming from it. The smell was unreal! Do you hear a noise like that coming from one of your traps when you run the water somewhere else?

Apparently our shower trap wasn't big enough, but it was never fixed at the time. There could have been a blockage further down as well. We topped up the water in the trap regularly to prevent the smell until we moved out of there.

Calahonda52

miezekatze wrote: »

I'm no plumber and don't know anything about plumbing, but I did have the same problem in a rented (modern) apartment I used to live in. In our case the water in the shower trap was sucked out whenever you flushed the toilet, you could hear a gurgling noise coming from it. The smell was unreal! Do you hear a noise like that coming from one of your traps when you run the water somewhere else?

Apparently our shower trap wasn't big enough, but it was never fixed at the time. There could have been a blockage further down as well. We topped up the water in the trap regularly to prevent the smell until we moved out of there.

+1 !
This is what I was after when I penned:
Is the sewer pipe from the bathroom vented up outside over th eaves?

You have explained it much better.:)

Jane98

Calahonda52 wrote: »

+1 !
This is what I was after when I penned:
Is the sewer pipe from the bathroom vented up outside over th eaves?

You have explained it much better.:)

No, it's not vented.

There are 2 bathrooms upstairs. When you let the water out of the bath you can hear the gurgling coming up the shower drain.

We also have 1 bathroom downstairs.

Murph_D

It sounds like this upstairs bathroom has two or more waste lines combined. You need to have a vent installed on the waste pipe to stop the waste from one unit sucking water out of the P trap on the other units, as suggested above. It's a simple job that any plumber should be able to do in an hour or less.