"Cat Pee" smell in my bathroom :-(

[Chocolateporridge]

For the last few weeks there has been a horrible "Cat Pee" smell in my bathroom. We don't have a cat, but dh says he popped out to the shed a while ago and on his way back into our house he met next door neighbours cat on its way out of our house because he'd left the door ajar!

The smell is worse when the room is cold, and at night time. I can't find the exact place it's coming from but it's definitely worse near the loo, which has been bleached and also steamed, as has the loo brush, but the smell remains!

Any ideas what this smell is and how to get rid of it?

Could it be your towel? Dh towel stinks of cat pee the day after gym!

Bathmat?

might be a water leak, which could be under the floor. Tie kitchen roll round all visible joints and under traps, put on floor behind WC. Remove bath panel and look.

Have you got an electric shower?

You could try biological detergent solution scrubbed around and about the loo, and in the corners of the room.

My towels and bathmats are washed every few days, definitely not that, but there is a chance there could be a leak, although there's nothing visible. Would a leak smell like cat pee though?

In the meantime I'll try the biological stuff, and if that doesn't work then maybe call a plumber!

Could it be a chemical reaction? I used liquid toilet cleaner (harpic power plus?). I think it may have reacted to the solid cleaner. Bathroom stank of cat pee!

Hmmmm, I did wonder about that, but I haven't changed any of the products that I use.

Am starting to worry about a leak now, as we live in an upper flat!

Can everyone smell it or just you? I had this....turned out I had a urine infection and it was my wee I could smell!!

Wet mdf smells horrible. Is the floor mdf with tiles or flooring on top? We had a slow leak fronpm the loo into the floor once and it stank to high heaven.

Menz towels sometimes need a wash after every use, not every few days. It's surprising just how much a wet towel (or sweaty t-shirt, or laundry bin?) can smell like cats spray.

Well I did wonder of it was just me who could smell it cos I'm pregnant and have a nose like a sniffer dog, but my dh, my mum and even my dd(4) can smell it too.

We did have a leak at the toilet waste pipe which my dh sealed, I have a container under it just on case but is definitely not leaking now, however my bathroom floor is tiles on mdf

In (what I thought was) a separate issue, we have had the sound of running water in our bathroom for a couple of months too, it's been slowly getting louder, but stops when we turn the stopcock off. It's impossible to pinpoint where it's coming from as you can hear it through the bath plughole and the sink plughole, which seems to amplify it. We have our pipes and drains insured with our boiler so a plumber came to have a look and was very thorough but just couldn't find anything.

This was before the cat pee smell though, so maybe I should call the. out again.

And there's me blaming that poor cat!

Sorry about the typos!

Light fitting? They often smell of ammonia when burning.

Hmmmm haggis that's a good suggestion and I hadn't thought of that, but all our light bulbs are very low energy and when I use the loo I'm the middle of the night I can smell it even though the lights haven't been on for hours. I'll ask dh to take them out and sniff them though We have loads of light fittings in our bathroom!

If your bloke met a cat coming out of your house then it can be that a cat has sprayed. It's one of the more join the dots thing than anything else.

Get down into a crawl and do the sniffing thing around the room.

It's possible for the toilet bowl to have a crack and to be leaking clean(ish) water into the floor. Just recounting what happened in our case. The rotting mdf really stank.

My mastermind specialist subject is "nasty plumbing mishaps". We've had lots in various houses!

Thanks gamer I'll ask my mum to do it when she visits tomorrow, I've got less than four weeks to go so I'm in no fit state for crawling!

You're right pharmgirl, and we've had some corkers too, so I'm really paranoid, but usually our grumpy downstairs neighbour is up to complain in a flash, if even a teeny bit of plaster has flaked off his ceiling.

I'll definitely call the plumbers tomorrow.

Have you got an electric shower?

Have you looked inside the WC cistern for the running water?

Have you got a hot water cylinder? What colour?

Hiya piglet No, we don't have an electric shower, we don't have a hot water tank (condenser boiler) and I've lifted the lid on the cistern to listen and there's no sound of running water from there. None of the water supply is affected at any of our taps but the sound of running water has slowly gotten louder over the weeks.

Shower curtain.

Definitely not the shower curtain, they're relatively new and not smelly.

Piglet you got my hopes up with your questions, I thought you'd got a solution! The plumbers are coming Thursday afternoon.

Well the plumber was VERY thorough, he could definitely hear the running water, but there was just no sign of a leak. Eventually he knocked the door of our downstairs neighbour (they're on the ground floor) and within a couple of minutes had found a massive spurty leak from the water supply pipe to our block, under the floorboards, with rising damp. It's clearly been like that for months. The Council own the flat downstairs and have done a temporary repair but the whole supply pipe will need to be replaced as it's lead! Environmental Health are coming on Monday to sample our drinking water

Anyway, this burst pipe is at the other side of the house to our bathroom so the cat pee smell remains a mystery!!

if there are lead pipes, ask the water company to sample the water ASAP for lead content in the drinking water. Possibly this is already in hand but it won't hurt to ask. Lead is especially harmful to brain development in babies and young children.

Sometimes there is a subsidy for replacing lead pipes. Quite likely the whole building will need to be repiped. With luck you may end up with improved flow, because new plastic pipes are generally fitted in larger sizes, because modern showers and combi boilers need good flow.
I was thinking a leak could be making floorboards or other material wet, this causing the smell.

I had this in my old house and it was a leak. A very slow leak which wasn't discovered for ages. The shower tray had a tiny crack and was leaking through into the chipboard and floorboards. We'd never noticed because of the floor covering.