What IS this smell???

[bitzermaloney]

This has been driving me and dh mad.

There is a smell in our (newly built) spare room. It is part of a 2-storey extension completed in May. We have taken out all the furniture. The carpet is new, but we washed it anyway with Rug Doctor. We have sniffed all around the carpet, which now only smells of carpet shampoo. We have sniffed the walls, the radiator, all up close. The same new carpet is in other rooms and doesn't smell there.

And yet, when you go in the room, you are hit by a slightly sweet and very obvious odour. I can't identify it - it doesn't exactly smell unpleasant, even, just quite strong. Kind of like a not especially nice perfume. The room underneath is the kitchen, which doesn't smell (and the odour isn't like cooking smells anyway). This smell wasn't there till a couple of months after it was completed; it just started sometime in the middle of June and seems to have got stronger.

We do have a dog, who a couple of times has been found loitering upstairs (where she's not allowed), and I wondered if she had been peeing there - but she has never done that before, and the smell doesn't smell like wee at all anyway. We're now keeping that door shut and the window open and it STILL smells....

Any ideas??!! We are at a complete loss as to what's causing it.

I think it's something has got into your cavity and died. I had this in the space above my head in my home office and I think something had crawled between the roof tiles and the plasterboard and died. It lasted for about 8 weeks and it was during that really hot spell and I had to sit here all day working just thinking for God's sake hurry up and decompose.

The smell reminded me of a sick or frightened dog because it's how our dog used to smell when she was ill. In fact if she wasn't dead I would have been blaming her.

Did you have any antique or old furniture in the room? Does it smell like almonds or rotting raspberries? Bed bugs are supposed to give off such a sweet smell and dogs can detect it - there is a chap in London earning a living by taking his "sniffer" dog into hotels.

I hope its not the little blighters bitzer and probably not if its a new room etc - I am just a bit obssessed with them at the moment - big rise in the number of cases in UK hotels and in private homes. I always check the mattress, behind the headboard etc now when I stay in hotel. Found them once.

Have you had any old fireplaces or chimneys removed or blocked up during the construction process? When soot comes in contact with water it will give of a mild sweet ammonia smell.

Thanks for the replies. conculainey There was a chimney - an old redundant one, and it was removed when we built the extension.... That sounds very interesting! Presumably it would mean water is getting in to the cavity somewhere. Will have to investigate that, thank you!

Mytholmroyd We took all the furniture out and it still smelled...

If it's something that's died at least it will disappear in the end - but it doesn't smell rotten to me.