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We have recently moved into a house with a large basement, but it's almost unlivable due to strong odor. It's hard to describe the smell, but it's pretty strong. The other two floors of the house don't have this.
First we thought that it's because of the type of food previous owners might have cooked, but it's not going away. We tried all sorts of spray, oil etc. There are no visible signs of leak or moisture. The basement has 80% ceramic tiles and 20% carpet. There are windows. We tried opening windows to increase circulation too. We also bought a dehumidifier to remove excess humidity. But, nothing is helping. The previous owner didn't have any pet, so it doesn't seem like pet residues.
If any one of you know or experienced this problem, PLEASE HELP!! Since it's hard to describe what's causing this, we are willing to get Professional help. Not sure who can we call. A painter told us, we need to re-paint, a carpet cleaner told us we need to deep clean the carpet. We just need an independent assessment. Are there 'odor experts' out there who can positively identify the source?
I wonder if you have some dead critter in a wall? There has to be a source for the odor and unless you find it, you may spend a lot of $$ and still not get rid of it.
Was the odor there when you looked at the house? If not, I think the dead animal theory might be the answer.
Yes, the odor was there when we looked at the house. We thought it's because of the food the owners were cooking (it's hard to decribe the smell, but it kind of smells like dried fish) and we also noticed that they didn't opened the basement windows. So, we though if we ventilate, it will go away. The other thing is it varies from day to day. Some days it's strong, other days it seems to have gone away (very little). I think (not sure) if we turn on the A/C it subsides a bit.
You are exactly right, we don't want to spend the $$ without knowing what it is. Just to pursue your dead animal theory, where should we look at? I have searched every nook and corner, nothing comes up. But, the entier basement is filled with this odor.
In our house, sewer gas backs up into the house when the trap in the floor drain dries out, creating an unpleasant odor especially during the winter. Try pouring several gallons of plain water down the drain and see if the odor is eradicated.
Excuse my ignoarnce. Where can we check for mold and mildew? Should we have our Ducts cleaned? There are no signs of mold in the wall or the floors. The house is 20 years old and I asked the previous owner and he said they never cleaned the ducts and they lived in the house for 5 years. The owner also told us that they had de-humidifer running in basement, but we tried that already and it didn't help much.
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Originally Posted by formercalifornian
In our house, sewer gas backs up into the house when the trap in the floor drain dries out, creating an unpleasant odor especially during the winter. Try pouring several gallons of plain water down the drain and see if the odor is eradicated.
I had this thought as well.
Although I'm quite certain that I have no idea what dried fish smells like, you may be describing the odor of sewer gas. If you have a sink, shower, toilet or floor drain in the basement that is rarely, if ever used, the trap may not have any fluid in it.
The way the trap works is to hold a small amount of fluid in a "U" shaped section of pipe. This fluid functions as a physical barrier to keep foul gases from raw sewage on the downstream side of your drain pipes. If a fixture or drain is not used often enough then the fluid in the trap can evaporate to a point at which it is no longer blocking sewer gases and you get an awful, mysterious smell in your living space.
A smell that fills an entire region of a house should be much more powerful near its source. If you can't clearly identify the carpet as the source of the odor, I think you're wasting money by having it deep cleaned.
Try wafting over all the drains in the basement. If you get a strong indication of "dried fish" you should run water through the fixture (or pour about a gallon of water down a floor drain) and then ventilate the basement for a day to see if the smell abates.
Thanks for your suggestion. I do have a full bathroom in the Basement, which has sink, shower and tolilet and none of them are ever used. I will try what you suggested and see whether it solves the problem.
I would be very suspicious of one feature in the basement you describe: the carpet. Conventionally installed carpets are such a bad idea for basements!
Even the driest basement, (and yours is probably pretty dry because you run a dehumidifier) has some level of moisture consistently seeping through the concrete due to capillary action.
Your basement is basically a box of concrete, which is a very porous material, buried in wet ground. You get the picture.
Some of the problem has to do with the way people install carpets in the basements. Your carpet is probably either placed directly against the slab or over a pad that is against the slab. In some cases they do an even worse job: they lay a plywood sub-floor and then the padding and the carpet. So now the wood, the padding and the carpet are soaking water from the slab.
Some contractors, to prevent that from happening, will install a vapor barrier, which is usually a 6mil poly sheet or similar, under the carpet or sub-floor, straight against the slab, as to prevent the carpet and sub-floor from getting wet. Sometimes they will just apply some waterproofing coating. All that does is trap the moisture behind the vapor barrier or the waterproofing coating. The coating will eventually peel off, and the plastic... there is no way of saying what is growing or happening underneath it.
According to the US Department of Energy's Building America Best Practices recommendations, and Building Science Corp, basement floors should be allowed to dry internally, therefore vapor barriers are not a good idea, and anything that soaks and retains moisture is not good as well.
In addition, wooden sub-floors and many carpets are organic or have organic components. Organic matter and moisture combined favor mold growth, which might explain the awful smell.
According to the US Center for Disease Control, once mold forms in wood or carpet, there is no effective or safe way to completely remove it from these surfaces. You need to discard and replace.
Of course there is also the possibility that sometime during the past 5 years, the previous owner had a water accident or spilled something that infiltrated deep in the carpet.
So yes, I would definitely suggest you get rid of all that carpet, and replace it with engineered basement flooring tiles or laminates. These products are 100% inorganic, non-absorbent, mold resistant and won't get ruined even if your basement floods. The finished surface is raised from the floor by channels or pegs that allow the air to circulate underneath and dry the slab, while keeping all that moisture out of your basement.
And please don't open your basement windows as you might make matters worse. When you open the basement windows, you are allowing moisture from the outside air in, since your basement is cooler, water will condensate all over. Your dehumidifier will work double, and you will be doing a disservice to yourself, as your utility bills will soar.
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Random smells are a bugger to get rid of if you can't find the source. If it IS a dead critter in the walls, that will eventually go away with time, or should have gone away already. (Dead mouse smell, for example, has an odor all its own but within a couple weeks it is generally gone b/c their bodies are small and decompose quickly).
Odors certainly can embed themselves in paint on walls (cigarette smoke is bad for this), and in carpets as well. So in your case, painting and carpet cleaning certainly wouldn't hurt, and those are courses of action you might need to pursue. If you are looking to get a (relatively) independent assessment, try to find a local ServiceMaster franchise (or Paul Davis Restoration, or Serve Pro, or similar) and have them check out the situation. There is a good chance that they might recognize the smell and know how to deal with it. They might suggest a particular cleaning/painting strategy combined with an ozone treatment.
Ozone is good at getting rid of most smells you encounter in a home, physically breaking down molecules and bacteria that cause the odor. That being the case, another cheaper option would be to just rent an ozone generator yourself. It looks like the top google result for "ozone generator rental" leads here: OzoneSolutions.com - Ozone Generators, Ozone Sensors, Ozone Injection Systems, so you could start there.
In any case, check back in and let us know what ends up working!
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