To ask you to help me find the mystery smell in my house?

[peachgreen]

My house smells like sour milk. It's HORRIBLE. I cannot for the life of me pinpoint what it is and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of what it could be, especially if you've had a similar issue.

It smells worst in the hallway, lounge and the dining room, gets slightly better in the kitchen and utility room. Downstairs toilet smells fine. It isn't coming from the fridge or freezer, or the sinks or dishwasher. The house is 1950s with solid poured concrete walls internally and externally so there's nothing in the walls. There is a big "basement" under the floor which is inaccessible without tearing up the carpet - but the smell isn't stronger lower down. And no, I haven't spilled milk anywhere!

We're generally a pretty clean household although I'll confess that with an excitable 1 year old I'm not quite as on top of things as I would usually be, but we're talking a week's worth of dust, not a month's worth of old food!

HELP. It's driving me bonkers.

@Elephantina If you're in NI I will genuinely pay you in your vice of choice

Nope, clean out the bin at least once a week (this is a lie, DH does it).

Aww sorry, not in NI! Shame. Hope you find it...

We had a terrible smell in the house. I paid a fortune to have all the carpets cleaned, and eventually (after it made no difference and the smell was still terrible) found a decomposing mouse in the loft.

If your power is tripping then I would suggest an electrocuted mouse (or rat) is the source of your smell. At least that was what our mystery smell was in our first home!

We had this god awful stench very similar to this last month, it turned out to be a rotten orange in DH work rucksack, we could only just tell it was an orange mind, Jesus it stunk. I was convinced something serious was going on!!

Check the fuse box....hot plastic/wiring has a really strange smell

Bizarrely we had a dead mouse stashed under a chest of drawers - a cat victim - and it actually didn't seem to smell at ALL. I think because flies found it and laid eggs on it, and the maggots ate it and pupated, it was a cleaner process than something simply rotting somewhere.

I didn't expect to find something like that and have been a bag of nerves ever since when looking under furniture.

OP's does sound more like spilt milk though. My colleagues had a habit of ditching their tea and coffee dregs in one of the pot plants at work (not that I was aware of that at the time) Eventually I exclaimed about the awful smell of sick I could smell when passing a particular filing cabinet - then everyone said "Oh yes, i noticed that, it's gross" and I tracked it down like a human bloodhound. Could it be something like that?

Bet that DH takes the bag out and doesn't wash the bottom out with bleach and hot, soapy water.

I stick a layer of clean cat litter in the bottom of ours precisely because an awful stench greeted us on return from holiday - he'd changed the bag but not noticed the stuff that had fallen/spilled underneath at some point. And if the bag gets set down on the way out the door/has a moist coating of ick over it, that transfers the smell.

Sounds like a dead mouse or rat. If it’s a rat you might get flies 🤢.

One of our cats kills a lot of mice. Once she didn't finish the job, it must have somehow squeezed under the bin and died there. Eventually the maggots led us to the source of the stench. I still feel slightly nervous each time I change the bin bag.

I once had an invasion of fruit flies and couldn't work out why. Eventually opened the bread maker and was almost sick - I'd put some potatoes in there months previously (because it was cool and dark) and they'd turned to liquid.

Buy a UV torch, turn the lights out and check everywhere! Prepare to burn your house in horror after though.

You haven't used valsper paint anywhere have you?

Sounds like dead stuff in the basement.
Have you done any research on previous occupants...?

Have you had a good rummage down the sides of your seat cushions for rogue food droppings?

Borrow a friend or relative's dog for an hour. They usually like to have a good sniff in new environments so would likely go to the source of an interesting smell.

I was going to suggest that. I was going to go one further and recommend a terrier, because once they've got to the source of the smell they stay in that spot and try to dig out whatever is stopping them from getting to the source of the smell.

That's how I knew exactly where the rats were in my kitchen!

We had a problem with mice a couple of years ago and the smell when they starting dying (and rotting) under the floorboards was VILE. I would say it smelt more like rotting vegetables than anything else though.

Could it be damp, esp if you have a basement?. My friends house smells of sour milk/vomit type smell and it turned out it was damp causing it...

Dead mice smell like something has died, they actually do. Not like rotting spuds or sour milk.

If you have a chimney check for a bird's nest or bird poo in quantity, that can smell a bit sour and can waft down a chimney. Ditto something in the gutter and downpipe. External drains too. Under decking. Smells can waft in.

Bleach isn't enough to clean a smelly drain, it will help but you need something stronger like Spirits of Salts. You need to do all the drains and toilets at the same time.

Shower traps and suchlike can dry out quickly when the heating is on and cause a pong, they are usually not smelly because they are wet.

Check for mould or damp patches on walls, leaks in roof etc. that can smell too.

Check loft for signs of life, squirrel nests etc. If there is an established one you may also have what looks like a leak on the ceiling which is not actually a leak.

We have had mice chewing through all the electrics in the space between the floors causing a major rewiring.

There is a rank smell in our bedroom at the moment, have hoovered everywhere, checked under the beds etc.

I'm wondering if a dead mouse is the issue - it is definitely worse in one part of the room. It's not completely unbearable but it has a slightly cabbagy, sweet type smell. The nearest thing I can think of is that it reminds of a baby nappy - slightly yeasty. (bleugh). It's been there for about 2 weeks I would say. Does that sound mouse like?

We are very rural with no cats. We do have a terrier/cross dog but he's old and seems totally unbothered.

Have you decorated recently? I have heard stories about people smelling weird smells like something rotting or gone off discovered it was the paint they had used. Some manufacturers took out preservatives intending on making paints more eco friendly but unfortunately it made the paint 'go off' and smell foul.

Fay, that might well be a dead creature. They actually smell like rotting meat, but worse. However, drains tend to smell more like cabbage. It can take a few cleans with Spirits of salts to shift a drain smell, over a course of weeks/months. A dead critter will fade a way in about 4 - 6 weeks. If you can shut the room up and keep it hot it will go faster. You can buy bags of stuff to help with the smell but they don't really do a lot.

I have learned a lot about these things since we bought this house, unfortunately.

When I was convinced the downstairs of my house smelled like a bin, everything was perfectly clean, but turns out I was pregnant and had crazy preggo sense of smell. Is it only you smelling it!? Possible?

Now our neighbours have trouble with their drains which flood their lawn sometimes. I know when it happens because I can smell it from our outside drains and in fact coming from the bathroom sink plughole. We put diluted Jeyes fluid down in the summer because the flies love dirty dish water and will lay eggs.

OH once swilled out the food bin down a drain, phew a week later there were loads of flies. yuk,