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.

funkyartist have you resolved your problem. My son has a similar problem in his 6th floor flat... Some people are saying vermin?can there be vermin that far up?

You haven't been painting with Valspar paint, have you? We have, and are now dealing with an intermittent smell problem - sometimes like a tom cat has been spraying and sometimes like something wet and rotten. Although the painted room is upstairs, the smell sometimes hits us in other parts of the house quite a bit away from the room which was painted (eg coming in front door/downstairs hall).

Other paints can cause a smell, not just Valspar. If it's paint it seems to be triggered by direct sunlight and air coming into the room.

I thought I had a sewage problem, others think a gas leak or catpee!

A lemon or other citrus fruit going off at the bottom of the fruit bowl will smell dreadful too.

I have a similar problem.

My flat was fairly new when I moved in, maybe two years old, but it was built by a disgusting cheapskate millionaire developer who does things like install really really really cheap stuff and use totally inappropriate materials and then blame the results of that on the tenants. But hey, that's okay because he has millions in the bank and people like me don't and that makes it okay. NOT!

(I for example repainted my bathroom after I moved in; should have done it the month I moved in but you find out that someone's used bad materials after those materials start developing problems. Still, it helped a lot.)

Anyway, the place has always has a really gross undefinable smell and I sneeze a heck of a lot in here. (And whatever causes the smell may now also be really starting to make me ill.)

There could be all sorts of leaks under the floors in and/or in the walls; it's quite possible.

The only association I have with the smell is “dead animals”, but if it were a dead rat or mouse, it would have stopped smelling by now, as I've been here for far too many years.

It's a smell I've never before smelled in my entire life. And I've been to and have lived in all sorts of places. I do suspect it is moulds under the floor or something like that (the place is like an ice box as soon as autumn sets in) and I am furious at the moment, because dealing with that would cost me money I don't want to spend on this, and currently can't afford.

If it's not moulds, though, what on earth could it be and how would I get rid of it?

Come to think of it, there currently is a second aspect to the smell. It smells like disgusting old sweaty shoes, too, now.

I've decided to tackle it with cedar wood.