House smells

[TheGreenBow]

Our clothes and hair (and those of anyone who visits) smell fusty after being in our house for a while. You only really notice it after leaving the house - not so noticeable once in it. I can smell the same smell from gaps in the skirting boards and have reduced the smell by caulking all the gaps I can find.

Ive been outside and have made sure the air bricks are clear. There are 6 just on one side of the house (none anywhere else but I think half the house has concrete under the floor rather than suspended).

The same horrible fusty smell is coming out of the air bricks.

There are no signs of damp within the house. No condensation and no visible mould.

DH can’t really smell it so that’s causing an issue as he’d just be happy leaving it and doesn’t want the flooring ripping up (understandable as no idea which room might have a problem under it, if there is one).

Can anyone suggest what we do? Tried a camera under the floor and can’t see anything but there are joists all over the place so it’s difficult to get a good view.

Should we maybe get someone to install additional air bricks and see if that works (before anything more drastic like flooring up)?

Also there are no carpets so it’s not them and it’s definitely a fusty/mouldy smell rather than a dead animal smell.

Could possibility be dry rot - I’d 100% check under your floor, can be terrible if left to travel through the house

Thanks. Problem is where to check. If it’s dry rot would there be any other signs within the house?

Can you borrow a damp meter to see if you can identity any damp spots? If not they're not that expensive to buy. My immediate thought is it is damp or mould, possibly caused by a slow leak under the floor.

We had this, and only found out because the water company knocked on the door to say they'd detected a leak under the floor.

You could look at a leak detecting service to try to trace tbe source.

Thanks we can do that as hadn’t thought to check for damp areas which might show us where to look first (I guess they could be damp without it being visible).

It smells like an old shed 😩

Just realised our metre reading thing for wood works for walls as well so I’ve been round and most walls are around 3% but one is reading over 5%.

You can stab at the skirting boards in the room where the smell is most pungent - dry rot sucks the goodness out of wood, so you’d be seeing some signs of weakness.

not necessarily if it’s in the wood under your floor though.

have a Google about the smell it causes, when we had it I could smell it! I knew something was wrong, but my DH and others couldn’t

it’s quite a unique smell

Thank you. Thinking it may not be dry rot then as it’s just a very stale smell rather than unusual. It smells the same as the corner of our garage does where we had a flood.l a few months ago. Although that doesn’t bode well for the cause of this as it’s clearly a damp smell 🤦🏼‍♀️