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Discuss Smells - please please please help.... in the Plumbing Jobs | The Job-board area at PlumbersForums.net

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squire2k

Hi all - I am new to the forum - I have a problem in my house which has been there for about 7 months now - I have spent about a thousand pounds now trying to get the problem sorted and am at the end of my tether.


We have a townhouse, and the ground floor has the kitchen, utility room, dining room and bathroom, which has a bath, shower and sink in.


Every now and then, usually twice a day, we have an overpowering smell of sulphur/methane rise up out of the floor. (I have 3 children, so its really not ideal!)


The smell happens 'usually' at around 8 in the morning and between 5-8 in the evening, which suggests its around heavy water usage times (baths/showers etc)


OK, so our first thought was a cracked or blocked pipe - we had a camera put into the drainage system from outside, and they discovered a buried manhole under our dining room - they couldn't go any further into the house because they couldn't control the camera past this manhole - so I excavated the manhole and called them back out again.


Inspecting the manhole, they discovered an old branch line which wasn't used anymore, and saw evidence of rats. They cleaned out this old pipe and cemented it up. They then proceeded to run the camera into the house, and found, low and behold…. another buried manhole!! They found no cracked pipes. They also then jetted the whole system to clean it out.


The smell then went away for about a week, and then returned.


Have checked all traps in the house and are all fine - the smell isn't coming from the traps, more from the floor/manholes/main pipes.


I then went onto thinking it could be a blocked vent pipe - so had a guy come out and put a smoke bomb down there. No smoke appeared in the house and the smoke was correctly drawing toward the vent pipe. The smoke eventually came out of our vent pipe - it did take a while though, but when it came, it came thick and fast.


When seeing the second manhole on the camera - we can see that ALL of our next door neighbours waste comes through into our manholes.


The rats are still there, and we have rentokill coming out next week - but the rentokil man said that the smell of rats is more like urine rather than sulphur/methane and would be more consistent.


My next thought is pressure - although the smoke came out of the vent pipe eventually would a partial blockage mess up the pressure and air flow?


As you can imagine, we are all going mental and the smell makes us feel sick and after six months it maybe time to excavate the second manhole - but this is obviously going to cause a lot more cost and inconvenience.


Its an old house, but renovated about 7 years ago, so everything is boxed in - could there be a broken internal air admittance valve somewhere - or do you usually only have a main vent pipe and thats it?


In total we've had 5 plumbers out, 3 visits from the sewer cleaning guys ad now rentokil….


Please help….. what could it be??? anyone want to buy a house lol?

 
I think seeing how all your neighbours drain run through your house, I would ring united utilities, these drains I believe now belong to them , this means it should be free for you and they should solve your problem, what area are you in?
 
all shared drains belong to water co now, not your problem, odd to have your neighbours waste in your property in sealed off access points though, someones been naughty in the past!
 
What has been done with the existing manholes that you have found?
Internal manholes should have an airtight cover fitted. Whoever built the extension to the house should have rerouted it at the time. No cheap fix for this i'm afraid.
 
There may be a clue here " everything is boxed in " is there a Durgo on the downstairs WC, is the floor solid or wood, are you in Lancashire, I saw a problem like this many years ago and it turned out to be a spare wasted pipe behind a studded wall with no cap on it. You might want one of those cavity cameras they are cheap enough these days. As Tamz said the drains should not go under the dwelling, who did this wasn't built like that, how old is the house
 
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thanks for all your replies so far... well I have 2 more plumbers coming out AND southern water (we are in kent btw). Today was one of the worst episodes yet, to the point where we had to leave the house as we were feeling nauseous. It was sooo strong. I checked with the neighbours after it happened - and they hadnt touched the bath/shower/sinks and neither had we - which makes it even more odd - and points towards a pressure issue, as it was a little windy at the time? can this happen?

The manhole i excavated was not an air tight seal, so one can only assume the other one isnt either. And yes it is very odd to have our neighbours drains run into ours, no other houses in the street do this, so somewhere over the last 100 years theres been some dodgy DIY going on.

Its hard to tell - there is no 'visible' AAV for the toilet, but yes it could be behind a wall somewhere, so will have to rip them out, but the smell really comes from the floor/manholes rather than out through the walls.

One of the plumbers coming round is very keen to sort it as he 'loves a challenge' so i'm hoping he wont give up. I'll be waiting with my drill to rip the place apart, as we have no options left now...
 
I would be tempted to bung the bottom of the soil stack with a 4" bung and fill system to sink level to see if there are any leaks or air test if possible .
 
Mondays are usually bad after the weekend beer and curries :smile:
It's not much of a challenge to figure out the smell is most likely coming from the manholes. It is open from there to the main sewer so if they are not sealed you have the smell from the whole town drifting into your house through the unsealed lids.
 
Before you throw more money away see what southern water have to say, if it's a problem with a shared drain, then you won't have to pay, which. You will have to with. Your local plumbers.
 
If the smell is comming from the manhole then theres your problem. all manholes should be airtight.
 
Before you throw more money away see what southern water have to say, if it's a problem with a shared drain, then you won't have to pay, which. You will have to with. Your local plumbers.

these plumbers have offered to come out for free to see if they can make any suggestions before i part with any more cash :p
 
u may be right - although odd how it hasnt happened for the last 7 years - and also, the sewer doesnt actually smell that bad, when the excavated manhole cover is up i can quite happily stick my head down it without too many smells. the smell we have when it kicks in is putride and only lasts for about 20mins, twice a day.
 
suggestions, 1. stick your head down drain when the smell appears and see if it is from drains. 2. Hepvo Waterless Valve 3. dig up drain hole, 4. wrap up all traps, toilets, sinks etc, make sure the smell isn't coming from appliances, 5. remove boxing and look for leaks. 6. get drain jetted from every angle so that it is completely clean. 7. flush very smelly bleach down neighbours drain 1 by 1 and see if you can smell it when it comes down. the sulphur smell is usually the remnants of the dirt from the drains that stays on sides/ top. usually the sink/ basin are the worst culprits of this. does your wastes run up hill? has somebody hidden food in the bathroom somewhere?
 
My mum suffers from this too, if she doesn't put soda crystals down the kitchen sink every few days she gets a 'drains' smell coming up through the floorboards in her living room. It seems to happen more when it has rained heavily or is windy.
Sometimes it can take a few days to come back after putting soda crystals down, sometimes it can take a month - so she does it twice a week now.
The kitchen sink empties into a drain outside the kitchen, there is an old unused short drain connection about two feet from it that was blocked with a bit of mortar and the rubbish and soil that has fallen into it over the years and my guess is that the smell is coming in through an air brick next to this drain, travelling under the kitchen (solid floor) and coming out in the living room. The old drain connection was where the stack used to be before an extension was built.
It started about 3 years ago, which is about 4 years after she had central heating installed, the condensate runs into this old unused drain and I guess the condensate has erroded the loose soil seal that once seperated the two drains.
The soda crystals my mum uses are only masking the problem as they clean the drain a little each time she does it, but she won't pay for someone to do a drain inspection and I don't have the equipment to do it.

Is it possible that you have something similar? Can you ever smell it outside near the drains? Is there an air brick near the drains that could be letting the smell back into the house?
 
As the others have said, manhole covers not only air tight, should be double sealed bolted covers. Check the drainage venting to ensure no siphonage from any traps.
 
Depending on the age of the system there could be individual vents off branches: these normally combine into a separate vent stack but if the branch was chopped off in the past there could be an old vent pipe lurking somewhere. I take it the smell is everywhere or is it particularly strong in certain places? From the description it sounds like certain wind conditions are causing the problem, possibly lower pressure drawing fumes out of the main especially if there's a dodgy admittance vent somewhere?
 
Hi all many thanks for all your replies and sorry for radio silence - been a few developments this end - rat people have come and laid some bait which is killing them off but the smell isn't a rat smell at all which rules them out.

i was outside the other day where the boiler flume is and it smelt exactly like it did in the drains!! So... I switch the heating off and leave on hot water only... Voila the smell has gone.... So I think I may need to now move this over to the boiler forum to continue the investigation... I've been reading about the condensate trap being empty and allowing sulphur fumes out into the vent pipe.... It's got to be that! So relieved to be able to stop the smell though was driving us crazy! Thanks for everyone's help to date
 
Given what you are saying, i'd advise you to have your boiler condensate pipe checked by a qualified gas reg guy who is also a decent plumber asap.
A badly fitted condensate pipe can suffer from induced syphonage which will empty the trap on the boiler and allow fumes to travel down the pipe.
 
Hi all many thanks for all your replies and sorry for radio silence - been a few developments this end - rat people have come and laid some bait which is killing them off but the smell isn't a rat smell at all which rules them out.

i was outside the other day where the boiler flume is and it smelt exactly like it did in the drains!! So... I switch the heating off and leave on hot water only... Voila the smell has gone.... So I think I may need to now move this over to the boiler forum to continue the investigation... I've been reading about the condensate trap being empty and allowing sulphur fumes out into the vent pipe.... It's got to be that! So relieved to be able to stop the smell though was driving us crazy! Thanks for everyone's help to date
The really worrying thing is if you are right & the smell is coming from the boiler flue via the condensate drain pipe how can it be detected inside the house ?? that would mean the products of combustion can also be getting in !!!!!

tamz beat me to it !
 
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pants! smell came back today, heating is still off.... there was no water usage from us... wondering now if next door have a condensing boiler that is packing up... kill me now! ha:bigcry:
 
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