Hi,

We are at the end of our tether trying to figure out what a strange smell is in our house from time to time. I will give you a brief history of our house so that anyone who has any ideas can kindly give us some much needed advice!!

We live in a victorian corner terrace house, built 1904, which we purchased just over 7 years ago. When we bought the house, despite their being no obvious damp problem in the house, the survey showed up that the damp course needed re-doing (it had been done some years before but had begun to fail) and so we had this done about 4 1/2 years ago. We had specialists in who stripped off the plaster, did the damp course treatment etc and replastered with the special plaster a metre high all the way round the downstairs external walls. A big messy job to say the least

About a year ago we noticed a strange intermittant smell would come up in the living room, dining room and the under stairs cupboard area. It's not the usual damp smell, it's almost like a slightly spicy, musty smell. Really hard to explain without someone sniffing it themselves! It seems to appear once a week/fortnight and seems more common when we've had a bout of rain. We first thought the damp course may be failing, so we got our local builder in to have a look, and he said the damp course seemed ok, but highlighted some moisture dribble marks down the back of a bookcase in the corner of the living room, which we put down to the fact that I do my ironing in there with a steam generator iron, so it does get a bit steamy even with the window open, as it's not a very big room really.

We weren't convinced this was causing the smell, as it was coming from the under stairs too (which was also treated with the damp course). So we got the damp course company back out to check it, and after paying for some tests they confirmed that the damp course was working perfectly fine and that there was no rising damp in the house. He gave the same comment on the ironing causing condensation in the living room.

So we are still none the wiser about this smell. The only other things to note are that:-

1. When we had the damp course done, we had not long had new carpet in the lounge, so it was rolled up and put back down after the work was done, but it has never really settled back down properly and there is a small gap along the skirting, which is the main wall of the living room (external wall) that the smell seems to come from.
2. Our dining room floor (including the under stairs cupboard which is off the dining room) has been concreted at some point, and so all the central heating pipes must be sunken into the concrete. Whether there could be a leak somewhere in the pipework maybe that could be causing the smell? We have laminate flooring over all of this area.
3. Probably unrelated, but we had to have a new boiler a couple of years ago as our old one kept losing pressure and the PRV went. Our new boiler Worcester boiler is now having the same problems and needs a new PRV. Not sure if this could be related to point 2???
4. The under stairs cupboard joins on to an adjoining wall with next door, but there is a vent on the bottom step into the cupboard which we try to keep clear so that air can move around in there.
5. We have a woodburner in the lounge which we use more for effect than for heating, and only normally used during the colder months.
6. Our surveys when we bought the house had a report for some woodworm treatment that the house had undergone, and there was some evidence of this on the floorboards in the upstairs bedroom when we took the carpet up. But we now have stripped floorboards in there (the patterns add to the character!) and so we know the woodworm has definitely been treated and is dormant.
7. Our house is on the corner of the street, and our walls/front door are directly onto a public footpath.

Cant think of anything else that might be related. We are a bit baffled, as the smell covers a few areas downstairs, so if anyone has any ideas/comments/suggestions, please please let me know!

We have no idea who we should get in to have a look at it for us - a builder??? And as it's intermittant and only normally lasts a few hours - more commonly in an evening - it's tricky to be able to get someone in to smell it. And don't want to rip up all of the flooring unneccessarily if we can help it.

If you need any more details I will happily give them.

Thanks in advance of your expert help!!

once a week or maybe once a fortnight, more than likely after rain, and only in the evenings...

spicy, musty smell?

poltergeist?



your house isnt built on a graveyard by any chance?

or maybe an old rubbish tip?

or coalmine?

I think radon is odourless...

sewer gas?

i havent got a clue really...

spicy AND musty?

ummm...

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I would take up a couple of floor boards and check under the floor for dry rot.

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Any rodents who may fancy a spicy takeway at the weekend

But having said that there is nothing worse, i have left the odd clean up rag and it drives you mad wondering what is that fecking smell? . I hope you get to the source of it soon!
best of luck

concrete floor scruff.... unless im readin it wrong? i did wonder bout rot but once a week/fortnight only at night after its rained?

only other thing i can think of is insect faeces or just insects like cockroache sort of thing?

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I assumed the rest are wood, or did I miss something

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smells in the understairs cupboard and dining room as well as the living room..
?

you may well be right mate?

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Is there a trap door there at all
if so stay away from that trap door
There must be something down there

Im intrested to see what it may be, hope they tell if they find the source

Thank you for all your posts so far, have given me a chuckle at least !

To help describe the smell - my hubby thinks its a bit of an "earthy" smell, if that helps? It's a strange one I know! But definitely not the usual damp/mould smell as I know what that smells like.

Just to answer a few points - the living room is floorboards, the hallway has laminate over the original red quarry tiles, and the rest of the downstairs - dining room, under stairs cupboard, kitchen and utility are all concrete floors, either with wood laminate over (dining room & under stairs cupboard) or ceramic tiles (kitchen & utility).

Any more comments/suggestions will be appreciated!!

mushrooms...

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Yes, some fungi can smell distinctly spicy, not unpleasant. Dry rot is due to Serpula lacrymans (in the UK) and according to Roger Phillips "The fungus gives off a distinctive damp rotten smell". Other sources give the smell as either fungal or mouldy depending on the growth stage. An 'earthy' smell would fit. There are other fungi that can inhabit homes but this is a nasty one. You can also get an earthy smell from moulds or smuts which are common where there is condensation. You can sometimes see them as powdery black layers on walls and other surfaces. Of course if you see large mushrooms appearing, that is not ideal, and yes it can happen. I've seen a photo of a large mushroom (a boletus) growing from the corner of a cellar, presumably the mycelium (sort of roots) got in from outside. There is also something called Cellar Cup, Peziza cerea, which can grow on damp morter. I've seen it growing on cement between paving stones.

Did Crippen live there?

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do you live in small dole, the tip smells just after a rain fall there.... stopped me buying a house there

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It could be some organic matter, even a dead rodent, somewhere under the floor or even in the wall cavity. When it rains, moisture levels rise, the object gets damp and decomposes until it dries, and the smell goes away. Dead rodents can produce a lot of smell, though it does tend to be rather unpleasant. Still, if it is well hidden, then you might be just getting a slight whiff in the living area.

There are suggestions that Crippen was innocent, it was his mistress wot done it.

Well... after reading the varied comments from everyone, dry rot seemed to be a strong possibility for our strange smell. So we did a bit more research, which seemed to confirm our suspicions - the symptoms all seemed to fit and the smell description seemed to be what we could smell, so we were led into a bit of a panic as it seems it can be a huge, and expensive, problem to get rid of.

But... I think I have some positive news to update....

We decided to get some of the floorboards up in the living room and have a look ourselves just for starters. We were expecting to find a gross carpet of mushroom covered joists that had been lurking there and spwaning under our feet for months without us knowing But to our suprise, all the joists looked ok, and there didn't seem to be much sign of anything damp. It just smelled a bit earthy and old as you would expect under the floorboards of a 100 yr old house to smell. So we decided to get our local builder to pop in while we had the floorboards up to have a look, and he said everything looked ok. But what he did notice was that we only had one single air brick, as it looks like a second may have been covered over by the council when changing the pavement slabs for tarmac some years ago. And the one air brick we did have, was all blocked up....

Sooooooo, you can guess the rest I'm sure... we got the vac on the blocked air brick and cleared it all out and instantly my hubby could feel the change in the air movement under there. The builder suggested we get another air brick installed to increase the air flow, so off we popped to our local reclamation yard, which just happened to have in stock an original victorian double air brick that matched our single one perfectly for £20. So the builder has now done a great job of installing that too.

I am happy to say that since that day almost 3 weeks ago, we have had a LOT of rain and yet the smell seems to have pretty much gone all together! All we have noticed is a very, very slight whiff once or twice but you really have to sniff hard, and I guess it might take a while to dry out completely.

We are 95% sure that was our problem though as we would definitely have had the smell return with how much rain we've been having. So for a £20 air brick and a few quid for our builder to fit it, we have hopefully fixed it

So just wanted to post this update in the hope that it may help someone else with a similar problem.

Thanks for all your posts