Smell

onedmc

We have a really bad smell in our sitting room.

This is just recent, as in the last 3 days. We have removed all the furniture and other items from the room. So its not anything inside the room.

It has a wooden floor laid onto of a wooden floor. With one external wall, there are no bathrooms or pipes feeding the bathroom adjoining the sitting room. All plumbing is at least a room/hall away from the sitting room and fed out of the house directly.

There is no sign of damp on any of the walls, its downstairs. We do have a chimney I'm fairly sure its not that.

The other possibility is that its a dead animal but I cant see that as we have a dog and she would be going nuts if there was an animal under the floor. Also cant see how it would get in as the vent is quite small at the front. Also the Mrs thinks it happened last year after rain but no way as bad.

So any suggestion as to how we might trace this, beside me digging up the floor boards. Are there companies that do this sort of tracing maybe with CCTV or similar.

Calahonda52

Describe the rest of the ground floor structure please?
What heating is in the rooms: rads with pipes under floor?
Where are the rainwater gutters?

Re dead animal: If its all suspended timber floor then access its not restricted in many cases to one room so check other vents around the house
The after rain clue perhaps points to a damp issue due to water getting in when the water table rises.
Non invasive cctv work will depend on whether the wall vents are in front of dwarf block walls supporting the floor so it would not be my starting point

onedmc

Calahonda52 wrote: »

Describe the rest of the ground floor structure please?
What heating is in the rooms: rads with pipes under floor?
Where are the rainwater gutters?

Re dead animal: If its all suspended timber floor then access its not restricted in many cases to one room so check other vents around the house
The after rain clue perhaps points to a damp issue due to water getting in when the water table rises.
Non invasive cctv work will depend on whether the wall vents are in front of dwarf block walls supporting the floor so it would not be my starting point

Yes there a Rad in the room and this is feed from under the floor boards. And there is the rainwater gully (the main one from the roof) just outside the window of this room. This is not blocked or backed up. These is also an outside tap here and there must be mains water nearby as its mains.

The rest of the ground is a similar type of raided floor so it is possible for an animal to move from one room to another. All the vents are in good conditions but i suppose a mouse could get in.

If its ground water then its not the water table as we are near the top of a hill, its more likely to be run off.

BryanF

Have you suspended timber floors?

What's the soil vent stack like? Foul manhole working ok?

Can you lift a floor board?

Is it particularly bad at any time of the day?

onedmc

yes the floor is suspended, all drains are working ok no backup ups in them and beside the drain/downpipe and gully from the roof there are no other drains nearby. This is no sewage/sink pipe anywhere near this room, all go straight from source to the pipes at the side passage, the other side of the house. Though I'm not certain that the drains and sewage are actually separated.

I cant say the smell is time-of-day related except to say that its worse in the morning but thats because we have the door and window closed at night.

Of course it may be an animal but since we think we have had this before and the dog would loose his reason if he heard something moving under the floor I doubt that its this.

As it is a wooden floor on-top of a wooden floor then taking up a board is a big job and would require a significant amount of carpentry removing some board which are are tonge and grooved, nailed, glued of say 2.5 inch boards and then taking up the original floor boards.

I may need to do the above if this dosnt clear up in the next week.

Calahonda52

is the heating system open or closed and if closed is the top up loop permanently open?

the_pen_turner

what kind of smell is it


go outside and smell the vent that goes under the floor.

is the chimney clear. maybe a dead bird

onedmc

So the smell abated for a few days and I presumed it was a dead animal.

But its back today after the rains so it has something to do with the drains. I'm going to recheck them myself before calling someone in to perhaps do a smoke test.

Thanks for the other suggestion, I did check the chimney and lit a fire earlier so it wasnt that, als had thought about the heating but didnt know how to see if it had a leak.

eoinfitzokk

Do you live near an old quarry, landfill, or Council Depot?

Pat McGroin

I know it might sound ridiculous but have a look at your light fittings in that room. I had a customer once that had the same complaint and it ended up being a light fitting with a bulb that was too strong for it. It was overheating and causing the fitting to give off a horrible fishy smell.
Might be worth checking before you pull up any floorboards!

bduffy

We once had a terrible smell from a spare upstairs bedroom. Turns out a rat got in and ate rubbish left between the joists after a refurbishment and couldn't get out. I ended up cutting up floorboards to get it out.
Dead animals have a particular smell that hits the back of your nose.....usually due to the SO2 from the rotting stomach contents.
If it's a wet smell then it's probably contents of a pipe leakage....
Best of luck

PirateShampoo

We had a rat get into the kitchen ceiling and die. The smell was absolutely disgusting because we had down lighters. Then one morning I woke up and found a few maggots on the floor, I thought to myself wtf and cleaned them up, only to turn around to find more had replaced them. The little ****ers were falling out of the down lights. I had to pull the lights out and sellotape little sandwich bags to the down light holes to collect the maggots for the next week or so.