Why does my toilet smell so much?

[LeSquigh]

Bit of a gross one here….

My toilet smells, not always, but most of the time. It smells like piss to be honest but I don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s cleaned in and around thoroughly. It’s a tiled floor. I’m putting bleach or toilet cleaner down regularly. I’m not sure if it’s the water inside that smells or something around it. I have another toilet which doesn’t smell at all on a different floor. There has been a rat problem locally but no sign of them in my house although I have seen them in the garden on occasion but we have multiple traps down. It smells like a dirty public toilet. What else can I check? Could it be rat related? The smell is pretty strong and as I said, not always present.

It might be rats, sad to say. I had that once in a previous house and I cleaned and cleaned - it was rats in the wall.

What about the walls next to and around toilet? Im always shocked as to how far my husbands piss travels 🤣

Not sure what it could be I'm afraid but I have heard that shaving foam gets rid of the smell of urine!
Just spread a good layer on the toilet floor/ toilet etc and leave for half an hour!

Could be worth a try?

Tbf I clicked on this thread because I’m having the same problem - it might be the 6yo boy who likes to leave toilet trips to the last minute and doesn’t focus on his aim, though, this time.

Seeped under the tiles & soaked into the wooden/concrete floor below?

Yes, the walls are tiled and cleaned thoroughly and all around - there’s a very VERY small gap between the back of the toilet base (like a box shape rather than a ubend) and the wall but there’s no chance of getting anything in there to clean because it’s millimetres wide.

If I had rats in the wall would I hear them?

Might well be worth replacing the toilet seat

You need to check the seal on the waste outlet. Often not easy to do, depending upon your model of toilet!

I have the same and it’s generally due to the limescale in the toilet bowl and rim. So it soaks up the urine, how ever much the toilet is cleaned.

is the toilet places on top of tiles or is it tiled around?
any males use it standing up?
we have a 'smelly' toilet and a 'normal' one.
the bowl of the smelly one is rounder, there is more splash potential. the smell seems to come from the rim.
it needs to be cleaned more often

If you can’t clean in the teeny gap you’d be best off applying a sealant so nothing can get in it... TBH I’d be amazed if that’s the problem but it’d remove all doubt.

Plastic toilets seats can retain a lot of smell

The toilet seat (as well as the whole bathroom) is only a few years old because it was completely refurbished before I moved in (it’s a rental). It looks very clean at least but may be worth a change.

@ButItRingsAndIRise that’s a good shout - the tiles are, I think, ceramic, and they are matte. I do scrub them though.

@SharpLily

You need to check the seal on the waste outlet. Often not easy to do, depending upon your model of toilet!

This would be my bet. If the seal has perished, you'll have a slow leak of wee etc going into the ground under the tiles.

@SharpLily I think I will get my landlord to have a look at the toilet next time they are here, they built it so will know their way around it.

@Noapplejustcrumble there was a bit of limescale build up recently because I was only using bleach but that seems to have gone with a a couple of weeks of black bottle Harpic.

@purplesequins it’s difficult to tell - it looks like it sits on top rather than tiled around. Yes, there are males using it standing up but they are pretty good and I think if it was that I would have the same problem upstairs, which I don’t.

@JesusInTheCabbageVan as the bathroom is fairly new is that likely? I don’t know how long these things last but I imagine more than 3 years?

Try taking the toilet seat off and cleaning the hinges etc. A surprisingly large amount of stale wee gets trapped in some designs. You may have different design of hinges in each toilet.

I had a smelly toilet, but it was more of a sewage-type smell so may be different to yours. It turned out the water level just needed topping up and the smell disappeared immediately.

@Bargebill19 @lavenderlou thanks for those tips, I will try them both

We had this problem with just one of our toilets. It was newly installed. Turned out it had a turn uppable and turn downable flush power and the guys who installed it had turned it to minimum power flush by tweaking something in the cistern. When it was turned up to maximum power flush the problem went away. This is just one possible explanation for stinky loo, out of many.

Is there limescale in the bowl? I find when our limescale gets too thick it sort of holds onto the smell.

I use a kind of industrial cleaner which is basically neat acid/ammonia and it dissolves it.

I have noticed less of a wee smell since I asked my menfolk to sit down. I think the problem is it splashes absolutely everywhere - so you can clean the toilet, but you also need to clean the floor, the outside of the bowl, the bit where the seat connects to the nuts, the underneath of the rim, and anything within about a 50cm radius so bath, floor, walls, sink, whatever is there. Ugh it's so gross. And only women ever seem to notice the smell magically .

I believe in the end, it actually wasn't DS1 who was causing the smell. It was DH, who is clean, but taller and therefore further away from the toilet, and the stray droplets are the problem. Especially if they haven't been in a while so the pressure is quite high.

Is there a gap where the toilet seat is fitted,or is it like this one? If it is try taking the lid off where it screws on and cleaning underneath,it sounds like ours and loads of wee gets trapped under there.I actually said aswell that it smells like a public toilet.I also clean around the whole toilet with neat zoflora and that does seem to help.

We have had this a couple of times and it was wee on the radiator. Which is NOT near the loo. Ugh

Try an enzyme pet cleaner spray sprayed everywhere

And get a scrubby sponge and go right up under the rim off the toilet, I found loads of limescale build up there

@Firstinlastout no it’s not like that one, it’s a standard one and it does have a gap (and I use cotton buds to clean in the gaps).

@PawsQueen an enzyme cleaner sounds a good shout, thanks.