Bad smell in house

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I can relate. My dad built a home that he lived in the last 6 years of his life. Constantly smoking and with tons of cats and dogs (pet urine), he created an odor that wreeked whenever you closed up the house. I believe it was permeated into the wallpaper, drop down ceiling tiles, insulation, flooring and HVAC pipes. I almost gagged everytime I had to go in there after it had been closed up.

I sprayed lysol into the A/C return vents etc. Nothing really helped. We ended up selling it for a low price. Maybe if you could empty the home of valuables, you could leave the windows open with a fan for a long time.

I miss the piece of property the house was on but I don't miss that house. Wish I could offer you more of a solution. Good luck.

I forgot to mention mold. Is there anyway to peek into the walls, under the sink etc???

 

[FrogLick]

another possablity is vermin dead or alive

When we bought our place a few years ago it had previously been unused for a lot of the time and the mice were quite comfortable. They had made nests in much of the furniture and of course a nice mouse urine odor. We had to replace all of the furniture, but there was a bit of a persistent odor. One day we fired up the range oven and a different and strong odor almost ruined our dinner. Ever smelled a baked mouse nest and roasted dead mouse? Turns out those cute little buggers had also nested in the insulation between the oven lining and the stove top. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of those little guys even if you think you don't have any. Took the stove top off and replaced the insulation and haven' had an odor problem since - except maybe when we cook a batch of chili. Use bait sticks outside and sometimes traps inside now and there's been no further problem.

 

[tawilson]

Many thanks to all of you. I feel well armed for evaluating the smell this weekend.
Jon

And??????

 

[JonR]

Its not a sulphur smell and doesn't really smell like hydrocarbons or mercaptans, more of a highly stale odor, as a house thats been closed up too long. Another farm house we started to buy had the same smell and we were told it was the propane residue.

We're trying to setup the inspection from the gas company now, Traps are all full, I tightened the toilet, no recently painted anything. I recall my grandparents house having the same type of odor....more like maybe poorly combusted nat gas. The pots and pans at the other farm house I mentioned above in my original post were actually covered in soot on the bottom so it seemed reasonable that the propane was the source of the smell. I really thought this would turn out to be a common problem. Even though the big tank has only been there for 2 years, maybe its built up some liquid hydrocarbons in the bottom.....anyhow, still searching.

 

[schmism]

if you have natural gas orifices in your appliances that are running on propane you'll get a lot of soot. we ran our stove this way for about a month before we had the propane tank set.

while the eyes didnt put off much smell, the oven would put off a high sooty/hydrocarbon smell (But only if we used it which we only did a few times)

 

[txslowpoke]

jonr, if your sure its not gas of some sort, try this. Go and buy the biggest cheapest can or cans of coffee you can buy. Buy some cheap panty hose.Cut panty hose about 6-8" long, tie knot on one end,filll with coffee grounds leaving enough room to tie knot in other end. Put several under the furniture in each room, launch them into attic, etc.
Its old truckers trick of removing bad smells from the trailer, for example hauling bull hides in 100 plus degree heat.........smell is horrible even with a trailer washout. Throw some coffee grounds in trailer, smell gne in about 12 hrs.
About 6 yrs ago my father in law had a squirell problem in his attic, threw hand fulls of moth balls every direction from attic access point, squrrils left moth balls stunk to high heaven. He was lookin at having someone to comeout and suck the sprayin insulation out, reinsulate etc. We did the coffee bombs............been good to date,