"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?

piglet, I am really curious what difference the colour of the hot water cylinder makes? Did I read that right? Ours is yellow (crosses fingers).

Colour indicates age, and the standards it was made to. Yellow is quite old. Maybe 20 years. The insulation is below modern standards but you can add a red jacket (or two) which will improve it. Put Climaflex or similar on all the hot pipes too.

It also has a less powerful heating coil which means that the boiler will take longer to heat it. A modern boiler can nominally heat a modern blue cylinder in twenty minutes.

White has a quite different meaning.

example jacket and pipe insulation Your pipes are probably 22mm and 15mm but might be 28mm if very old. 28mm pipe insulation is less widely sold.

I do like reading PigletJohn talking about water cylinders. It has a soothing quality, like listening to the shipping forecast.

Thanks. House is approx 26 years old. Original boiler, I think.

Sorry to hijack thread...

Well, on the same day that the plumber discovered the leak in the flat downstairs, I placed a tray with bicarbonate in it behind the cistern and the smell has just about gone! You still get the odd whiff but nothing like what it was. I'm presuming that it's the bicarbonate absorbing the smell, but would still love to know what's caused it!

I still think it's possible that the leak was causing a smell to come up from something wet and rotting under the ground floor, especially if there is a duct in the corner of the bathroom where the soil pipe is boxed in.

If it's a cat, they will either be squatting and weeing, in which case the floor will keep damp/sticky or spraying so look our for yellow specks around your bathroom at shin level.

My sister-in-law's toilet (separate from bathroom) smells the same. To be honest I've put it down to either the men in the house not getting their aim right or the fact she put some kind of powder down the toilet, so her cleaning product.

What have you got on the floor? Does that smell? If it's carpets it could be a few years of damp feet on the floor and bathroom smells in general.

We had this in one bathroom. Ripped the lino up and replaced it and you could still smell it, plus crawled all around the loo looking for leaks, bleached the radiator etc etc. It turned out to be rats . They were in the loft and the walls, not the bathroom exactly, but the exterminator mannie said that rats will have a toilet area and I think that's what we were smelling, either in the wall or possibly from the ceiling above. He put down poison in the loft, outside under the decking and in the hall cupboard and lo and behold, the smell vanished. This is despite the fact that he thought the smell couldn't be connected to the rats because they didn't appear to be in the bathroom - it is too coincidental that the smell vanished when the rats did, and we didn't have any work done on the plumbing. And it did smell like cat pee. Maybe the cat was coming in to do you a favour!

Oh my goodness, rats?! We had mice in the loft once and that was bad enough. Maybe I should call environmental health? xxx

Excuse the kisses!

Are there any other signs of rats? With us, we realised what the problem was when they started gnawing the bottom of a cupboard door (they were getting in via a hole under the boiler, but so long as the cupboard door was shut they couldn't get out into the house itself) and left droppings in the cupboard. The exterminator looked in the loft and found lots more droppings, but thought the rats actually lived outside under the decking. He showed me what looked like small rabbit burrows going under the decking and said they were rat runs.

Good luck, I hope that's not what it is! Although the exterminator got rid of them very very quickly (thank God).

There's definitely no other signs of rats but a thought has occurred to me. Our neighbour downstairs was growing cannabis, masses of it, a year or so ago. Was put in prison, released eventually on tag and was very apologetic to all the neighbours etc (he'd dangerously been stealing electric). He seemed to be doing well but over the last few months we really never see him and we hear him coming and going very early in the morning. Out of interest I just Googled 'cat urine drugs" and it says it can be a smell related to methamphetamine production! What on earth should I do

Crikey Chocolate! I'd report to the police anonymously and ask them to investigate.

We're going away for the weekend so maybe I should phone them while we're away so my neighbour doesn't get suspicious that we reported it?

Dh didn't want me to report to the police, he's not convinced that's what's causing the smell but lots of other things are adding up to make me believe it's illegal drugs.

Well, thank goodness I didn't report it to the police! dh stripped off the sealant at the toilet waste pipe and it STANK of cat pee. He's renewed it all and the bathroom smells fresh as a daisy! Phew

Thanks for all your tips.

Glad it was nothing 'dodgy'!

if the soil pipe is plastic, it should not need sealant because it has rubber rings inside to make the seal.

No, it's not plastic, it's some kind of metal, this house is ancient!