Sewage odour in house

ThankingYou

Hi All,
I recently moved into a house that was unoccupied for about a year. It's 3 floored end of terrace house with toilets at each level. A few rooms in the house have a bad odour. The rooms affected are directly below bathrooms and the toilet in the ground floor has a strong odour. I got a reputed plumber to examine the drains. In his opinion there was no evidence of any leaks and everything looked intact and functional. I also got the drains cleaned with the hope that it will resolve the issue. Unfortunately it persists and I am worried that it is not as straightforward a problem as I thought. I am also worried that there could be long term effects of inhaling these gases which can be detrimental to health. Will a smoke test help? Has anyone had a similar experience? I am desperate to have the problem resolved and any suggestions would be welcome.

johnny_tractor

stop eating onions and drinking guinness

johnny_tractor

was just joking with my post above,

but seriously if you can suspect sewage gas in the house you need a professional, asap
i would add to that open all windows and get a pro asap

sewage gas is lethal

MackMack

Just in case you have only checked the toilets, the odour could be coming through the sink / bath / shower drains too.

Sleeper12

You'd be surprised how many homes I'm in and they don't even know they have this problem.
It could be lots of things as stated in the post above. If it is a constant smell it's most likely an ill fitting multiwick at the back of the toilet or a lot of modern homes vent the toilets in a duct ,through the attic and out the roof. Personally I hate these setups. They look like a great idea on plans but in practice the ducting fails in the attic and the sewer is now venting into the attic

exaisle

If you tend to only use one bathroom, check the traps to make sure that the water in any of the the U-bends hasn't dried up. This happened me last night when I returned home after 10 days away..

Alternatively, many older houses were connected to the main sewer by a pipe that had a strap and rubber bung on it to seal it from the main sewer. Eventually, the rubber would perish and the seal would fail....sorry I can't describe this better...but what you want here is an OLD plumber! A friend of mine had a similar problem and she had three other plumbers in before the fourth (an oul' lad!) diagnosed the problem in minutes.

reap-a-rat

exaisle wrote: »

If you tend to only use one bathroom, check the traps to make sure that the water in any of the the U-bends hasn't dried up. This happened me last night when I returned home after 10 days away..

+1 for this - we had a foul smell in our house for ages. It tended to come and go a bit. Finally realised it was from the bath in the main bathroom because we never used it, or the shower in our ensuite. Solution was simply running water for a minute every few days to keep it fresh. Haven't had the smell back since!

exaisle

reap-a-rat wrote: »

+1 for this - we had a foul smell in our house for ages. It tended to come and go a bit. Finally realised it was from the bath in the main bathroom because we never used it, or the shower in our ensuite. Solution was simply running water for a minute every few days to keep it fresh. Haven't had the smell back since!

If you tape over the drain with duct tape it will stop evapouration....and even if evapouration does occur, it'll stop the sewer gases getting into the house...

Simple but effective! :-)

listermint

exaisle wrote: »

If you tape over the drain with duct tape it will stop evapouration....and even if evapouration does occur, it'll stop the sewer gases getting into the house...

Simple but effective! :-)

Erm bath plug.....

exaisle

listermint wrote: »

Erm bath plug.....

In my case the culprit was a shower....

DublinDilbert

Is the stack internal or external?

If it's internal make sure it's not venting into the roof space.

Had a similar problem and found the stack in the attic wasn't connected to the flexi pipe going out to the roof.

Popped the jublie clip on the flexi pipe, not a problem since

my3cents

To add another suggestion to the mix a neighbor has an occasional issue with a sewage smell and in their case it seems to be a problem with wind direction (pun unintentional).

The vent pipe for the septic tank is on a north facing wall but doesn't go above the top of the wall and what we think is happening is a north wind blows down the vent pipe and pushes the smell back up the soil stack which terminates in the roof space.