We were out of town for a bit and got something in the house, the exterminator has been out, traps set, found the entry spots, fixed those, but the gift that keeps on giving is the smell. They were in the unfinished basement and we are in the process of removing anything the touched/chewed etc, but there is still a smell. Any suggestions for the best ways to refresh the whole house? All the windows and all the doors are going to be open for a few days, but I need to be more proactive than that.
Is it mouse urine smell or is it a smell of a dead mouse? Different treatments.
This apparently rocks:
I like the idea of the Odo Ban as it seems to be a disinfectant too. We had a dead mouse in the attic and sprayed febreeze and it eliminated the odor.
Tough one, I had rodents get into a car that was parked in our garage for a while, and it took a lot to get that car to where it didn’t smell any more, sometimes you end up with a total loss from that. If it is an unfinished basement, besides trying the various cleaning solutions, places like home depot and agway have things designed to clean up after rodents, if it is an unfinished basement you can try sealing the walls (and potentially floors) with something like drylok paint if the cleaners don’t work, plus you may be sprucing it up, too. I have found for some reason that citrus based cleaners works well with these kinds of things.
Get rid of the mice, and the smell will disappear eventually after using one of those deodorizer solutions. Recurring smell is the sign that mice or rats are still a problem.
My brother is a general contractor and I’ve heard him rave about the effectiveness of the ozone generator his cleaning crew uses to eliminate serious odors from fire and water damaged homes. I think the home needs to be unoccupied while the machine is in use. That’s all I know!
For years, until I figured out how a mouse was getting in the house through the dryer vent, about yearly one would end up between the walls and die. This was only at a particular area. The dead mouse smell was evident if you sniffed the wall. It usually took 2 weeks and gradually the smell went away. I am guessing it dried up. We live in a desert area though which may have helped this along.
Be careful with ozone cleaners–can irritate airways of asthmatics and others who are senditive.
It was a rat 
The darned thing somehow got into the kitchen, left poop many places, literally chewed the side of a drawer by inches. I am still going drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard making sure all is clean and good. The foundation vents were chewed into, not where you see, but between the foundation and the sill. The unfinished basement stinks, I think it’s more nesting and urine than death. We are working our way through, trying to clean, and hopefully the bugger did not die there!
If you have crawl space with insulation in it, make sure your rat’s buddies are not nesting in there!
Yah, it’s a walk in “crawl space” with insulation and the plastic stuff covering the ground.
Yup. Peel off some of the insulation and peek in a few spots. There might be traces of the nesting… That would be the major source of the smell, not the droppings in the house. If your house has forced air heat, 30-40% of the air in the house travels through the basement, picking up the smells lingering there.
We are dealing with the traces of the freeloaders in the attic of the “new” place… I know it is a pain. Sorry you have to deal with this!
Put out bowls of white vinegar. I bought a home once where the previous owner smoked in the garage. Bowls of vinegar got rid of the smell quickly.
Sometimes the smell lingers because they have died in the walls. This is surprisingly common when the exterminator uses bait stations. If you have drop ceilings in your basement, you may want to lift a few tiles and see if there are any dead ones there too. You’ll smell them for a long time as long as the house is closed up. The masking deodorizers will cover the smell, but only finding and disposing of the bodies will eliminate it.
I second the look through the crawl space. We had odors from (separate times) a nest and a dead rat in a crawl space. Once both were gone the smell dissipated quickly. If it really still smells, there’s probably a remaining reason. It is a much fouler smell than mice!
everyone seems to have “mice” in their house. me thinks "mice"is a kinder gentler way of saying they have rats. just saying. :>
Well, I think I smell a rat! The exterminator took down a bunch of crawl space insulation we will be replacing and hope that reduces the smell. The sneaky little dudes should now be totally locked out and maybe the smell, that DH cannot even smell, but which makes newly pregnant DD nearly vom, will dissipate.