Onion smell from boiler/strong sense of smell

[Wjdbxb]

Can anyone else smell rotting onions when their boiler has been on for hours?

There is nothing wrong with my boiler - it’s been checked many times because of the smell, and I’ve also had this smell from the boilers of the last two houses I lived in, and they were checked too. When the engineers have come out to check it the entire house is full of a rotting onion smell coming from it, but only I can smell it. My son can’t smell it, my partner can’t smell it, the gas men can’t smell it, I’ve had a neighbour in to check and they can’t smell it, but to me it is a very strong smell that fills the house. It’s nothing like the smell of gas - it’s onions.

i tend to turn the boiler off when I don’t need the heating or hot water because of the smell, and it takes a few hours to develop so I never smell it in spring and summer. It’s particularly bad when the heating is on for a long time.

What am I smelling?? And why it it only me who can smell it?

I do have a very sensitive sense of smell of that helps - I took my cat to the vet last year because she stank of urine to me (nobody else can smell it). They tested her for absolutely everything and she got a clean bill of health apart from urinary crystals but the vet said I couldn’t possibly be smelling anything to do with that through her skin. I told a friend this and she said “ooh, one of my 3 cats has urinary crystals, sniff the cats and see if you can work out which one it is.” And I did (I swear I am not usually a weird cat sniffer) - I could immediately smell the same smell that my cat has on hers. I can smell when my son is ill and I can smell when he is digesting certain types of food too (not in farts, just a general smell coming from him). I can smell if he’s hungry as well. Weird.

I am exactly the same and think it's more of a curse than a blessing tbh!

I can smell things from far away. I can tell when people are ill or getting ill. I can tell what they have eaten and not from their breath!

Unfortunately, I also have a very strong gag reflex, so you can imagine what an awful combination that is! I have had to walk out of public toilets many a time 🤢

That's impressive but sounds exhausting. I consider myself to have a sensitive sense of smell but youre on another level!

Could the smell be hot plastic from somewhere on the boiler casing? There are certain plastics (often older plastics) that I find smell of onions/BO, and its always more intense when they are warm. For instance the window frame in my shower I can smell if I put my nose close normally, but on a blazing hot sunny day when it gets warmed from the outside I smell it just walking near to it.

Well I'd never heard of this OP but I just googled it and apparently smelling onions when there is something amiss with the boiler or central heating system is " a thing" . And there are genuine reasons why this occurs.

However if you have had engineers out to check and they can find nothing wrong I would suggest your very sensitive sense of smell is picking up on some chemical which is present but not in high enough quantity to cause an issue.

Solidarity! It’s no fun is it? This is utterly grim, but I can smell what someone has eaten the day before when they have had a poo from the smell left in the toilet - not just obvious things like curry, I’m talking right down to oven chips and things like that. I can smell certain oils. It’s gross. Poor you having a sensitive gag reflex to go along with it.

Oh, possibly. I will have to sniff other things to check.

Oh joy! 😂 let’s hope nothing goes REALLY wrong with it or the smell alone will probably knock me out before I manage to tell anyone.

I've even had to refuse to buy a used car on 2 separate occasions due to the smell inside them!

I can completely understand this.

There are people with a very acute sense of smell. This woman has had a lot of media coverage, which is worth reading around to see how much she picks up from other people as different interviews pick up on different things: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47627179

Its like the fishy smell when theres an electrical problem. Not everyone smells it.

You sure it’s not a rotting dead thing? A slug stinks when they decompose!