Help me unravel this mystery before I burn the contents of this room down

[NotAgainWilson]

As the title says, I am feeling like purifying this room through fire after a week of cleaning. washing and replacing stuff has proved unsuccessful to remove the stench a short term lodger left behind.

The room was spring cleaned before his arrival. He was around for 3 weeks. He had massively smelly feet (I said that as the mother of a sporty smelly child that I could barely stand at times, but this is in a different league, more than ten times worse and resistant), after a week around I asked him if he could do something about the smell stench, he apologised (he was lovely and polite otherwise) and said he would get odour eaters to sort it.

It didn’t make a difference so, as I had told him when I rent the room that I would be going in to open the window to ventilate the room every morning, I got the super strength version of Odor Eaters and sprayed all his shoes every morning and left the window open the whole day. This helped the smell not to extend to other rooms as before.

The last of his 3 weeks, he had a cold so stayed at home, therefore I was unable to spray shoes if open the window. He left the room tidy but the stench is still there. It smells as if you have crossed bad smelly feet with buttery toffee and is of such strength you feel like vomiting.

The room was also left covered in some white fluff, very similar to the fluff you may find under the bed if you don’t clean for years, but it was EVERYWHERE, all around the floor, walls, furniture, picture frame and a lot of it has gone into the radiator. I cannot imagine such amount of fluff being produced in three weeks, much less so by a single person no matter how dirty they could be.

I have removed more than bucket load of fluff, vacuum cleaned and washed the walls, floors, furniture and the inside out of the radiator, used a whole can of Odor Eaters, Oust and a full bottle of Ecover as well as leaving the window open every day, one week later the stench is now a smell but is still unbearable.

I have bought a new duvet and pillows. But I am convinced that this situation can be due to either an endocrinology related issue or bacteria, and therefore not safe. Shall I burn all the bed linen? the whole room? I am at the end of my tether, have spent a week cleaning and again every day over the last week and the smell is still there.🤮🤮🤮🤮

The smell is worst by the radiator Is it an electric radiator, could it be a fault in the circuit overheating the plastics and heat-resistant chemicals used in outlets, circuit breakers, or wiring insulation may emit a fishy or urine-like smell.

Get a fumigator in. My guess is the lodger may have had a condition that doesn’t enable them to sweat properly and the give off an odd smell.

The white fluffy stuff, not dry rot mycelium by any chance?

Try asking on the Mrs Hinch or Stacey Solomon Facebook groups

It wasn't Prince Andrew was it? Can imagine a lingering odour with that one.

Time and keep airing the room with regular cleaning. Anything you can move outside to give it more air and sunlight with help too.

We'd a really bad smell from when our stuff had been stored in an unventilated house in the heat.

Other people said they couldn't smell it. I think I was highly sensitive to it and any little trace I could sniff out.

I still can pick it up on say a box that hasn't been opened yet but on most other things it has eventually gone.

It did take weeks maybe bordering on a month

I'm surprised at all the suggestions for ozone machines.

People who buy ozone generators may not be aware that ozone can harm the cells in the lungs and respiratory airways. Exposure to ozone irritates and inflames the lining of the respiratory system. This causes symptoms including coughing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and impaired breathing. Ozone can worsen asthma symptoms, and may contribute to the development of asthma. Elevated exposures to ozone can cause permanent lung damage, and repeated exposure can even increase the risk of dying among persons already in poor health. Persons especially vulnerable to health problems from breathing ozone include children and those who already suffer from asthma or other respiratory diseases, including the elderly. There are many experimental studies on animals, including dogs, cats, hamsters and guinea pigs, that show respiratory effects from exposure to ozone. Birds are especially sensitive to the effects of air pollutants, including ozone.

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/air-cleaners-ozone-products/hazardous-ozone-generating-air-purifiers#:~:text=People%20who%20buy%20ozone%20generators,of%20breath%2C%20and%20impaired%20breathing.

First link that came up - Welsh government in covid times spent about 3 million on project in covid to clean classrooms before they finally took on board low level ozone is actually really bad for health.

Sticking soft furnishing and mattress in sun is a good idea - UV kills bacteria.

@Washingupdone also right to point out electrics about to go can smell of fish or urine - though sound like a different smell best to be aware.

I’m sure he is mortified, especially now that I have taken all the cleaning and products costs from his deposit. I guess, like with most people who stink, his brain was filtering out the stench…

He was perfectly clean and presentable, 2 showers a day at least. It was just the bloody shoes.

That’s an interesting theory, it looked very much like that!

Edit: but I didn’t see any fluff piling up before he got the cold. I didn’t go in at all in his last week only saw it when he moved out so might have something to do with the industrial amount of toilet paper he used when he had the cold.

I had a mouse crawl in the back of my desktop computer many years ago (brought in by cat). Every time the computer was on it heated up the dead mouse and it absolutely stank. I hadn't idea what the smell was and it drove me mad. I only found out what the smell was months later when a guy fixed my computer and there was this mostly decomposed mouse. Mice definitely smell!

Thank you all. I sprayed the mattress with vinegar, and later with the HP Odour remover and after a few hours it seemed to have worked… then went out, came back by midnight and the smell was back. It is no longer in the mattress though.

I am narrowing it down to the radiator now (not electric) as the smell gets now only strong when the radiator is hot. He was running everyday and it has been raining quite a bit so he was keeping all his shoes just under the radiator. I have vacuum cleaned the radiator THOROUGHLY, inside out, and removed the fluff from the wall behind it, sprayed the inside and the wall with vinegar but still stinks when warm. I guess it needs a proper wash as it may be impregnated with the smell having the fumes of the shoes going through it for days but there is no space for a good scrub. I’ll try to get a brush I can run through it covered in a cleaning product.

@RhubarbGingerJam Than you for the for the detailed information about the Ozone machine, I had not considered the possibility of getting one as I thought they would be expensive but also wondered about safety given ozone levels are often mentioned when describing polution

Can you call in a priest?

@NotAgainWilson you can run an ozone machine in a closed room for an hour. Just don’t enter it. Once the machine is finished, just open the room window to air it. That’s the protocol for the hen I was hotel housekeeping for smokers rooms.
Although imo they didn’t actually achieve anything as I could still smell the smoke. They just sped up the process of airing a room by leaving the window open - in a hotel turn over was more important than leaving a window open for a day or two!

I’m so furious about all this, I might be the first casualty of the exorcism!

Can you move the mattress to a garage, then see how it smells in there?

the white fluff… there’s no way it could be… athelete’s foot crumbs? 🤢

🤣🤣🤣

Just a thought… you could put the duvet and pillows in the freezer, to kill bacteria. And curtains?!

Feel very sorry for you. Some good ideas odour removing on here. Also
I feel very sorry for the person I'm question... must be very embarrassing

Just wondering if he has actually been drying his shoes on top of the radiator when wet..

and the fluff - if you used up lots of tissue paper and balled it up and stuffed it in damp shoes to attempt to soak up the smell/damp - could that attribute to some of the fluff? Tissue wads being faffed with daily or so?

I’m still on ask him what it was so you know how to approach the cleaning of it?

I would get an electric essential oil diffuser and a big bottle of tea tree oil and run that for a few days with generous portions of the essential oil. Tea tree is antifungal and antibacterial and the diffusers make a very fine mist of it in the air so it gets into every nook and cranny.

You can get massive long thick bristled pipecleaner things for cleaning in all the bits of a radiator.

Or you could get a new radiator. I bet he's been drying his sweaty manky running shoes on it and his foot poo crumbs have dribbled into all the crevices.

@NotAgainWilson

I am narrowing it down to the radiator now (not electric) as the smell gets now only strong when the radiator is hot. He was running everyday and it has been raining quite a bit so he was keeping all his shoes just under the radiator. I have vacuum cleaned the radiator THOROUGHLY, inside out, and removed the fluff from the wall behind it, sprayed the inside and the wall with vinegar but still stinks when warm. I guess it needs a proper wash as it may be impregnated with the smell having the fumes of the shoes going through it for days but there is no space for a good scrub. I’ll try to get a brush I can run through it covered in a cleaning product.

You might have to replace the radiator itself sadly - hope you find another remedy though, without the additional upheaval and expense. 🌹

Not much point offering you a toffee, is there?

@NotAgainWilson I'd stop fannying around with vinegar and get yourself some superconcentrated F10. Used in the right concentration, it's an extremely effective antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial liquid. I use it successfully for many things as it's pet safe (vet recommended it to me) - from stubborn BO on sports kit when a hot wash with laundry sanitizer didn't work, to a persistent case of athlete's foot.

Put towels underneath the radiator and douse the fucker in F10 is my advice.

Then burn the towels, obvs....