We have googled quite a bit so I am turning to crowdsourcing. We recently moved into this home. Off and on over the last 2 months we are noticing an unpleasant smell. It seems to be mostly in the breakfast nook (built on a slab), and sometimes travels to attached mudroom.
It is difficult to describe it. I have said “sort of plastic-y, sort of stinky” which is not too helpful. It does not smell like natural gas/propane, nor mud/dirt. At first we thought a mouse or squirrel might have died in the walls and the smell went away. But now it is back, on a more warm and humid day. We are trying to see if there is a pattern to when the odor appears.
Various thoughts:
Can stink bugs make a noticeable smell even when they are not crushed?
Something with the septic? It does not smell like sewage, if you define that as smelling like a bathroom or dirty diaper
Does mold smell like this? (i.e. not just musty)
Something in the ducts? Do they need cleaning or is that a scam? (However the HVAC is running all the time, yet the odor is not there all the time)
No one has had any respiratory issues, even my DH who is allergic to everything
We are very puzzled. And we aren’t even sure who to call to try to fix this. An exterminator? Mold remediator? General contractor who has seen it all?
If it smells like fish or maybe urine, it can be plastic that is over-heated. If that’s the case, make sure to check wires and electrical shielding and sometimes light fixtures (for us, it was the light fixtures. It was sporadic, because it was only when we used the lamp enough to cause a temperature rise).
I’m gonna go with no, the dryer vent has not been cleaned out. The previous owners were terrible at maintaining the house (part of it is a very old historic 1700s, and part is from the 1990s. The smell is in the newer part). The HVAC filters were horrible, the well/water system was not being maintained (resulting in corroded and leaking pipes). We have had almost every trade in here and they all say some variation of "wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before. (We had a good inspection, but not everything is easily anticipated).
The washer/dryer is upstairs, as fans of my last post will recall But that is worth checking, even if it is only inches long.
Now I know why they insisted on burning a candle every time we walked thru, even when we asked the real estate agent NOT to.
Not sure if this may be the case, but a funny story of tracking down smells in my home.
For over a month I smelled something horrid. Like cat pee. But we don’t have a cat. We did have a friend come visit with a dog (we have dogs as well but they’d never pee in the house) and I thought maybe he had marked something. It was so bad that I was getting ready to either buy a black light kit or have some professionals come in. The only thing was, the smell kept moving.
Fast forward a week and I tell the story to a mom that we carpooled with. She mentioned that she smelled it every time my kid got in the car (color me embarrassed). Turns out it was his sneakers. And I couldn’t track down the smell because he kept leaving them in different places.
Feels like a game show but I’m going with “leaky something” for 200. A pipe or valve that doesn’t always leak but may when water is run through sporadically. I’d look under sinks for any corrosion of any type around a valve. You might not see water if you have towels under there that might be soaking it up. Then it smells, dries out sorta, goes away, repeat.
Or the leak could be directly beneath a floor board–so if you do a bunch of cleaning which involves running a dishwasher in the kitchen for example or clothes washing where it drains down that same pipe the water creates a smell from either mold or rotting wood that would come and go. Just enough to cause a problem if too much water or too humid to dry quickly.
Some updated info: A friend brought over a moisture meter. It showed a lot of moisture at two locations at the junction between the breakfast nook (on slab) and the main kitchen (on crawlspace). We are thinking that it was probably incorrectly flashed or constructed (which would be par for the course in this house sadly) and some of these areas are rotting.
We also detected moisture in the ceiling around one of the can lights that drips when it rains especially hard. We replaced the roof and it still is happening.
Makes me really want to sue the previous owners for lying on the disclosure but my real estate friends tell me that it is not worth the hassle.
(The only reason I am not more upset is because we are planning to update the kitchen, so I know we will be opening up those walls soon anyway)
We’ve owned two old houses. In one of them, we had someone walk through with a special light. He was able to find areas where there was no insulation. He also found a squirrel nest that we had no idea was in that wall. The house was very big (17 rooms) so we didn’t use that room much. Otherwise, I think we would have heard them moving.
Still it was nice to get it taken out of there.
My guess would be mold/rotting wood. Has such an odd smell. And it comes and goes. Have you thought about opening the wall where the smell is emanating from?
Leaks like yours are notoriously hard to find the source. It could be in a far away spot, follow a beam in the roof and then drip into a can light. Might only happen during a big storm and then only when the wind is coming from one direction. Could be water from a covered deck and not the roof. Or maybe you notice it not during a storm but afterwards at some point–look for an area that water may pool. Water can also be blown up into a soffit and make it’s way into your home also. OR–this happened to a friend with a weird leak–water was being blown in through the siding of the house at one spot–it only leaked when the wind came directly at the side of the house.
Anyway, we’ve had a minor leak for 20 years and still can’t figure it out. We’ve had people out to find it, we’ve been in the attic during storms, after storms looking to no avail. Fortunately it drips into the kitchen sink so hasn’t caused much problem overall.
I had a smell like that one time on the balcony of my condo. Birds had made a nest in the gutter downpipe and I guess one or more of them died in there. The nest got flushed out during a heavy rain.
We had that happen in a house we bought. It was sort of a fishy spell and we had trouble pinpointing it because it came and went. We finally figured out it that we only smelled in when the hall lights were on upstairs. My husband replaced the light fixtures and the smell went away.
But that is worth checking, even if it is only inches long.