God awful smell

[KittenOnTheTable]

We moved into a council house and there's a smell in our hallway and top of the stairs. Had council guy out and says he thinks it's cooking smells from the last tenants. No smell in living room or kitchen though or bedrooms. It's worse when someone has had a shower or bath.

Currently pregnant so don't know if that's making it worse but I can't stand it.
Don't know what else I can do. I've shampooed all the carpets, scrubbed the walls.
Any ideas?

Could be drains inside or out if it happens after a bath or shower. Try to notice if they run slowly or make gurgling or echoey noises. A fishy smell is often electrics.

You could try putting drain cleaner down the sink and bath plugholes. Being pregnant can make you supersensitive to smells.

This is how Jeffrey Dahmer’s downfall began, neighbours noticing nasty smell.

🤣 neighbours are nice people helped us move in. No dahmer vibes here yet. I've honestly done everything I can think off. Even Scrubbed the walls in case it's embedded in them. I don't want to have to rip the carpets up.

I don't know about the shower or baths but some types of plastic light fittings smell after a while when they become hot and it's not a plastic burning smell, its hard to put your finger on it but its unpleasant and strong. The smell builds up the longer the lights are on. I've had this in the past and I couldn't track it down or why the smell was intermittent. It took months to work out it was coming from the ceiling light fitting which had become degraded.

Oh I'll double check the lights in the bathroom smell is strongest on the top landing. Plumber has said it's not coming from pipes. I'm driving myself mad with it. But it's making me gag

Can you put down some tubs of bicarbonate of soda? If it's the drains, I'd try hot water and soda crystals but if it's properly blocked, you need to have them looked at.

Do you have a roof void above the top landing? Is there a possibility for a dead rodent (putrid smell) or a hornets nest (smell of compost / wet leaves / rot) ?

Dead mouse is my guess. Smells rank.

When did you move in and what does it smell like and how long for?

Could it be bats in the roof?

Sprinkle loads of bicarbonate of soda on the carpets. Leave on for as long as possible then hoover.

Sounds awful and it would drive me mad. I hope you manage to get rid of it soon.

Dead rodent.

I was going to say rotting light fitting as well.
I had it. It was awful but intermittent. Took a while to figure it out , smelt like something had died.

I had a bad smell for ages and it turned out to be a doormat that had got wet from the dogs bowl and basically turned moildy

yuk 😂

What does it smell of? Weird fish off smell can be faulty electric and melting plastic.

Deffo not a fish smell. It hard to place what it exactly is. Plumber said it's a curry smell I'm not convinced. Husband say he can't smell it. Putting husband in the loft today to have a good look about. There's a fan thing in the hallway and I think it's coming from that the unit to it is in the loft

If your husband can't smell it then it's unlikely to be as bad as you say. Dead rodent smell is AWFUL so he would definitely smell that!

Dead mouse smell reminds me kind of of cauliflower

The plumber can smell it and my DD so I doubt it's just me going mad

For anyone still around for this boring thread. Looking at getting a ozone machine but the warning labels are putting me off anyone used one?

I haven't tried an ozone machine. Curry smells do linger. Are you averse to using a plug in air freshener? It might reset the smell if you use one for a couple of weeks.

Is there a loft hatch on the landing? The smell might be coming down through there from something dead in the loft space.

We do have a loft dh investigated the other day and found nothing. Have an automatic air freshener and it's not strong enough 😔 thank you everyone for putting up with my mad search to find out what it is

So we managed to turn off the fan thing in the loft and the smell has finally disappeared I'm one happy lassie. We need to keep an eye out for mould as it's ment to stop mould growing but yay 😊

😀

Thanks for the update OP!