Smell from downstairs neighbour

[H3yth3r32020]

Not an AIBU but hoping someone will be able to help out!

We live in a first floor flat - purpose built but very old building. Lovely elderly gentleman is our downstairs neighbour. Flats are the same layout and he uses the 2nd bedroom as his room, meaning its below our spare room.

We've been getting the room ready for our baby to move out of our room soon and have noticed over the last couple of months a very strong smell of urine coming up from downstairs - we can't seem to clear our spare room (soon to be baby's room) of the smell, even when leaving the windows open all day everyday.

Obviously air freshener only masks the smell but can anyone think of any alternative we can try to prevent this?

From neighbour's point of view, he seems able to look after himself still and we've not noticed a smell around his person (though obviously with covid, contact has been quite brief recently!) so we're flummoxed as to how the smell could be so strong in his bedroom that its coming up to our flat - but obviously not something we can broach with him, so just looking for solutions we can try within our flat!

Appreciate this is a little niche, but we're obviously concerned about having a 6 month old sleep in there - so any advice is very welcome!

Put some drain unblocker fluid down your toilet and see if that helps. Sorted our urine smell out which we thought was coming from next door. Must have been blocked in a pipe somewhere.

Degraded light fitting.....

I learn a lot from mumsnet - strange smell of dodgy electrics & melting wires -

Electric smells fishy, Rats smell strongly of ammonia, mice smell like hamsters sort of musty hay.

Maybe a hoarder with bad habits

Placemarking - I never knew so many things could smell of wee. I'm learning so much!

@5zeds

Rats. It’s THE main sign beyond chewing. Call rentokill or similar and let them deal with it. They pee in one place but range quite far.

Rats are basically incontinent and dribble pee as they walk

If you are quite friendly with the elderly man, I would ask him for some advice, He may well know about strange smells in older houses, as he has probably got some experience regarding problems in old houses . from the oldie days.

This weather is reactivating some old smells so maybe it will die down. I went into our spare bedroom this morning where our old dog had let herself down months ago on the floor boards during a bout of gastro illness and was grrr to note that a faint but definite nasty ‘smell’ is in the air despite all my scrubbing and bleaching.

Placemarking - I never knew so many things could smell of wee. I'm learning so much!
When we moved into a house once it smelt like pee everywhere. Landlord apologised and said they'd had a dog that sometimes peed inside and they'd tried everything. It didn't take as long as we'd assumed to go though (problem was more pet hair!!)

Do you have a garden outside with trees? There's a tree like a palm tree that when it flowers smells of urine.

Also damp/mould can give a similar sort of whiff.

Highly unlikely to be him I think OP , that really strong ammonia smell rarely comes from a person. I second carpet glue , but also could there be something dead in the walls

Loads of others have said it.

Valspar paint, have you painted with it?

My parents had a light fitting years ago that stank of ammonia within a few minutes of being turned on. Took us months to figure it out.

I had this but I'm downstairs and they're upstairs and smell was the bathroom, was a leak and the soil pipe had to be replaced

Hi op,I cared for some incontinent people in their own home and the house deemed or urine as soon as the front door opened it knocked you backwards.
But the smell was not upstairs very much at all.
This isn't very helpful in answers but may help in crossing off the neighbour as the source.
Perhaps the building maintenance staff will find where the problem is coming from.
Good luck with resolving it.💐

Reeked of.

When I was growing up we had a dreadful smell in my brother's room that my parents blamed my brother for. My mum stripped out his bedroom and removed every single item in it, before working out it was the light fitting. Old bakelight or plastic can really stink.