disgusting stink in house - what to do??

[whatatip]

For over a year now, we have been getting a disgusting smell in our hall. It comes and goes, is generally in one place at the bottom of the stairs, but can sometimes be right up at the front door to hit you or visitors as soon as they enter!

I think it smells like a decaying body.
The first time we noticed it, a man had recently been over to put some poison down after me seeing a mouse, so I assumed it was a dead mouse under the floorboards. After all this time of it coming and going though, I wouldn't have thought that this was the explanation.

I once lifted up the carpet and the boarding and the floorboards enough to get two floorboards up, but that was all I could do with two toddlers around and I couldn't see anything. There are no waste pipes there, just heating pipes and the electrics to the kitchen in the basement.

Who do I call to help with this? How can I sort it out, it is revolting and embarrassing.

Burning/overheating insulation of electric wiring can smell horrible - you might want to get the electrics checked.

What sort of smell is it? Does decaying body fit the bill?

Is it sewerage? Stagnant water? Maybe get your local councils environmental health people out!

I've heard it described as like rotting fish (I think that was on a thread on here)

Mould?

I'm assuming that you haven't smelled a dead body and it's just what you imagine that would smell like mould is pretty vile. I had a leaky flat roof and my back room (used to be outhouse) stank. Really horrible dirty stench that got right in the back of your throat.

We had similar, turns out the waste pipe in the kitchen was leaking sewage and dirty water but the smell was worse in the hallway because there was a vent in the floor and the stink was coming up through that

You see, I wouldn't say rotten fish. But it is an idea to call an electrician anyway to at least tick that option off.

Tango, would the environmental health people deal with smells on private property though? Actually, thinking that through, there is our kitchen underneath so there can be no standing water under the floorboards I wouldn't have thought.

Dead rat. Smells awful. Could have died of natural causes under the floor.

Block up any holes outside to it if you see any - try and get it removed if possible, if not it will get eaten by creatures in a few months. It will smell much worse in this warm weather.

Hecate, we did have a dead mouse a couple of years ago and that's the smell of dead body I am thinking about, (not the stench that came when my MIL was under the stairs, that was a whole different ballgame).

Did your mould have the cloying damp smell or was it different? Was it directly under the leak?

Claimedbyme, did the kitchen smell too?

Laurie, that was what I was thinking initially, but then why does it keep coming and going over a period of about 15 months, and in the same place??

They might, there's no harm in asking them!!

Sometimes you could smell it in the kitchen, I think we were just used to it, the heating engineers who put in our central heating noticed it, we had looked under the hall floor as thats where the smell was worse but couldnt see anything, but the heating boys were under the floor changing heating pipes and they told us!

Weve been getting a cooking vegetable/garlic smell intermittently from our boiler cupboard. Have had a boiler engineer out who said no probems there, and the house was rewired 3 months ago, so doubt it is an electrical problem and now we're at a loss too. Dread the thought of it being a dead rodent!

Do you have a toilet/bathroom/sink off your hall?

we had a foul smell in our old flat - in the hall, near to a bathroom. Turned out when the plumber fitted the bathroom sink it was leaking. It was a tiny leak that just dribbled down the back of the sink (so not noticeable) and under the floor boards. Once the leak was sorted, the water must have dried up because the smell went away. It was such a relief because the smell wasn't constant - it came and went and drove me nuts (would practically crawl on the floor sniffing to try to find out where it was coming from!)

Could it be the fitting your light bulb is screwed into because that smells awfull, that would explain the smell in the same place.

Does it come and go with the weather? We have a similar issue which seems to be worse when it's been raining a lot (so it's been a bit of a problem lately!) which I think must be something to do with drainage. Do you have any drainage pipes on the outside of the hall which the smell could be coming from?

we have the same problem and we thought it might be sewage but it was a dead rat. the first time we had the smell we could not loacate the body but the rat catcher said let nature take it's course which we did and then we got a fly infestation but that went after a few days. we got another smell recently and we found a dead rat in the cellar. yuk! but that was the cdause of the smell as it went as soon as we disposed of the rat.

there is an increase in rats in houses at the moment due to the wet weather.

Reading with interest!

We have an intermittant whiff in our downstairs bathroom, which has been going on for a couple of years. It goes away for weeks, then suddenly it's back, and we can't pinpoint what seems to cause it.

I have suspicion it's drain-related, as that's what it smells like, but the only suggestion was that it was to do with the U-bends not working properly, thereby letting gas from the drains back into the house.

The bathroom is next on our "to do" list, so we might uncover the cause; until then, we'll keep using the air freshener.

there was an awful smell in our hallway. Was really unpleasant and smelled sweet and sickly, like something gone off.

It was my DS's trainers - they were a cheap supermarket pair that he wore without socks and they stank! We threw them out an voila - nasty pong was gone.

Check your hoover. Sometimes, something rotting can be hoovered up and then sits in the bag festering away.

Did you use Crown Paint in your hall ? Last summer we were quite ready to rip our entire house apart looking for "the body" .... something in the paint reacted to the walls to create the most dreadful corpse/gas smell. Thankfully Crown were extremely helpful. Hope you can get it sorted

Hi whatatip, I know this was posted a long time ago, but did you ever get to the bottom of the problem? The way you described it is exactly the same as our house! I'd love to know if you found the source of the smell.
I'm almost resorting to an exorcist :-(

Sounds like smelly shoes to me. My husbands smell putrid. Literally like something has died!

When we bought our house we could smell this terrible smell in the dining room , we just couldn't find out what it was and in the end we sniffed and sniffed it until we realised it was the plastic screw on bit for the light bulb ....l kid you not , it was terrible.