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billybud21
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14 Nov 2010, 10:14 am

KakashiYay wrote:
I hope you don't obsess about what I'm about to say!

Last week, I kept smelling something rotten and decaying. After power-cleaning the kitchen, taking out all the trash, and lighting a non-fruity candle, I could still smell it. Neither my husband nor father, who was visiting, could smell it. We found out 2 days later than our neighbor had died, and had been in his home for over 2 weeks. It was unseasonably warm and breezy the two days it bothered me, then froze up. I really think that's what the problem was, and it squicks me out to no end that I was breathing dead guy!

But probably there's just a bit of apple peel under your stove. Probably. :wink:


Oh, my Kakashi, I sure hope it was the apple peel too!


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kx250rider
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14 Nov 2010, 12:11 pm

First, there are A LOT of people who have little or no sense of smell, and they won't admit it to themselves (let alone anyone else). You're not going to convince anybody that there is a smell, if they can't smell it. You're wasting time, and probably irritating them and yourself trying to prove it. I have an excellent sense of smell; so sensitive that I go crazy if somebody a half block ahead of me in a car is smoking a cigarette. It infiltrates my car, and I can't get the stink out for a long time.

For the causes of the odor you're noticing, I'd think carefully about what has changed (or been changed) around the time you started to notice it... New paint or carpet? Furnace repaired/replaced, or started up for the first time of the season?

If it's an organic smell (garbage/rotten/sewer, etc), it could be a dead mouse inside the wall, which would take about a month to totally go away. If it's sewer gas, that can be caused by a roof plumbing vent pipe being clogged by a birds nest, or anything that might have fallen down it. That will make sewer gas build up in the house drain pipes, and blow out into the room through bath tub or sink overflow drains, etc. It could also be mold, which is very common. That would be due to a leak in the roof or plumbing, and often you never see any moisture since it could be hidden in the wall or subfloor.

If it's chemical (plastic or paint smell, etc), that should be easier to locate since it probably is something new in the house. TV sets (especially plasma) and larger computer monitors can put out strong chemical smells when they're fairly, new, as they get very hot inside and "cook" the gasses out of the new plastic as they get worn into regular use.

Just know it could be virtually ANYTHING, and use logic and process of elimination to find it. I live on a farm, and I seem always to be tracking down offensive smells. 90% of the time I find the cause and fix it, but 10% of the time, it just resolves itself and gets forgotten.

Charles



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15 Nov 2010, 4:23 am

kat_ross wrote:
For the last few months I have been experiencing a very bad smell on the third floor of my house. I smell it in the evenings, a couple of times a week, and it lasts for about 4-5 hours. At first I thought my neighbors were cooking something with a very strong/overpowering spice, but now I am not so sure that it is food, because it isn't appetizing at all.


I smell things that other people don't, and sometimes (like the mould, dead vermin or blocked drain) the smell later becomes obvious to everyone.

Is the smell approximately the same time, and the same days of the week? If you go to a shop that sells food like the food that your neighbours eat, can you smell anything similar? Can you smell it out in the street? (I assume you mean neighbours in another building, not on the third floor of your building).

Some people like joss sticks (agarbati, incense sticks) that can have very unusual smells, especially the herbal ones like rosemary or sage. They could seem bad if you interpreted them as a food smell.



SoulcakeDuck
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15 Nov 2010, 5:10 am

KakashiYay wrote:
I hope you don't obsess about what I'm about to say!

Last week, I kept smelling something rotten and decaying. After power-cleaning the kitchen, taking out all the trash, and lighting a non-fruity candle, I could still smell it. Neither my husband nor father, who was visiting, could smell it. We found out 2 days later than our neighbor had died, and had been in his home for over 2 weeks. It was unseasonably warm and breezy the two days it bothered me, then froze up. I really think that's what the problem was, and it squicks me out to no end that I was breathing dead guy!

But probably there's just a bit of apple peel under your stove. Probably. :wink:


Beat me to it, I was gonna say dead dude/dudette.


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