"There's a whiff in my cupboard, dear grandma's dear grandma's...........

Can you get hold of a damp-meter? Do you know any surveyors? (or enthusiastic DIYers)

Yes. If wood is in contact with water, it will rot. Even contact with a brick wall with a faulty damp-proof course, or something bridging the cavity between an inside wall and an outside wall that gets very wet can let enough damp through to cause rot.

Can you get wet rot in houses built reasonably recently, I.e. 2005?

It sounds like wet rot to me. I bought an old house; one bedroom had about 6 layers of wallpaper one on top of the other. When I stripped it off I let out a loud scream, and a plumber who was working in the house at the time came running. The wall over an old unused chimney had an extensive and revolting "tree" of rot which when exposed reeked of an earthy smell.

Sorry Ana, Hudl thing!

The cupboard in question is on a North facing wall, the cupboard to the left of it (used to store baking tins, the food processor, the slow cooker and the incredibly ancient rotisserie) also has a bit of a whiff, and is always colder than the other cupboards

I have also found that the laminate floor in that area feels colder underfoot (I don't wear shoes indoors)

A dead mouse is not a smell you forget. Nothing smells as bad in my opinion.

We had a strange smell in our fridge once and it turned out to be a piece of smelly cheese. It smelled a bit like a dead mouse but not as bad.

I get a whiffy kitchen cupboard just before it rains ! I thought it was just my old kitchen units but it's happening again with the new one . There's a drop of about 10 feet under my house I sometimes wonder if it's the 'water table ' ?
I trust the smell like a barometer - it never fails me . I can smell it right now so know not to put my washing out !

Why is it 'grandma's'?

How many of us have now, this morning, gone and sniffed our kitchen cupboards?

I think, if the cupboard backs on to or faces a south wall, then you might be experiencing some sort of 'warming'. These days kitchen cupboards seem to be made of plastic/wood which gets really hot, and if enclosed will cause warmth to build up and create a smell. When the weather cools down the smell will sometimes disappear. Not sure if this is what happens for you, but I know that our dishes in the cupboard which backs on to a south facing wall are sometimes warm, and if we leave bread in our cupboards, (even away from the sun)in this really hot weather, then it will quickly turn to mould, even out of it's plastic wrapping, so these days it is kept in the fridge. We do of course have a really hot kitchen, and we are not brick built, so all that information might be totally useless!

My son n family moved to an old rented house about 12 months ago. Within a few weeks they noticed fine dust in the cupboards next to the cooker and repeated cleaned it up. In the next couple of weeks they noticed the floor in front of the cooker felt a bit soft and cardboard moving boxes of extra things nearby were going mouldy. Landlord sent a builder who removed the plinth under the cupboards and cooker and revealed galloping dry rot with cooker about to disappear into smallish floor cavity! Landlord kindly paid for them to move to a modern house in the same town and they are much happier now as new house has a proper garden for 2yr old to play in! Might be worth looking behind your cupboard plinths, just in case. ?

Every summer I am troubled by ants in my kitchen. They are a nuisance but don't smell. Then I noticed a smell in the cupboard under the sink and couldn't track it down. My grandson was quite small at the time so I asked him to lean in as the cupboard went along one wall and have a good look round. He was ages then he stood up and put his hands on his hips
" I think it's an ant's fart." He said.

I have the same thing but think it is that the plumbing from the washer goes behind the cupboards . It drives me potty as I hate smells that I can`t identify . I changed from liquid to powder detergent after looking on Google and the smell went .

Is the wall behind the cupboard unit mouldy maybe? We have a tenant whose washer leaked and the mould on the back wall crept up and up till it went above the countertop (behind the back splash panel) and all the way to the top of the wall.

But if you have tile or exposed backsplash, then that would be it unless it's coming from above down from ceiling?

Just a thought...what a mystery!

Do you keep a salad spinner in there? Recently, I took the salad spinner out of a cupboard and there was a strong 'vegetable/damp' smell. It was very clean, no sign of old lettuce, but I think over time water had gathered in the spinning bit. It got a good scrub with bi carb. the smell went.

We have just had new kitchen put in.
As I was at home over seeing making copious amounts of tea and coffee I noticed that the units were not right back against the wall. This was because walls not completely straight and also to fit with wide work top
It maybe that your cupboards are the same and something is between cupboard and the wall.
Also when you check cupboard look up to the underneath of your work surface with torch and check seal.

Or maybe you have got a cupboard ghost!

We think we have ghost that pops up every now and then.
House is modern but was built on some sort of WW2 Italian camp.

Might also be due to hot weather and is a whiff from out side and just lingering that cupboard, if you don't open it as often as other cupboards

Cloggy salt. We have that too. I've always put it down to living in a temperate rain forest climate here in W Scotland. That won't apply in more easterly and southerly places though.

The old house thing might be a factor too.

I d say damp my daughter has two cupboards she doesn't use for that reason and yet the others on the same wall are fine It is the same at my friends she has some she doesn't use and I too can smell damp in mine that are on the outside wall
My salt is always cloggy even in the summer but then my house is 140 years old

First thing that came to my mind was a lost and rotting potato.

At one time I chase a smell for months.
The cause eventually came to light when we noticed the (kitchen quality) laminate flooring swelling slightly at the joins - about 3' out from the front of the sink. To investigate dh lifted a couple of the boards and the floor and underlay was sodden. The culprit was a very slow drip from plumbing behind the back of a cupboard, it was not affecting the cupboard but had over a long time soaked the floor and seeped right out into the middle of the kitchen.

The smelly and worst area was actually about 6' away from where the problem plumbing drip was situated.

Many thanks for the replies, all appreciated.

The cupboard is low level, not wall height and is not under the sink (that one just sort of smells neutral, with just maybe a base of Brasso, and perhaps a hint of rubber gloves, eat your heart out Gilly Goulden )

Definitely not a dead rodent, sad to say I'm familiar with that smell, and this is not it!

No plumbing in that area either, the only thing I can think of that might have any bearing is that the external air brick isn't that far away from the cupboard of whiff, but is between that one and the saucepan cupboard, which has no smell at all

If it's a floor unit does any of the plumbing run under that cupboard? Try taking the plinth off and having a look underneath. We had nasty smell in the utility room and floor had gone mouldy under washing machine.

I had exactly the same. But since the fire the smell has gone.

It couldn't be that something is decomposing in the wall behind the cupboard. We used to live in a house next to woodland and fields. Occasionally there was a smell in the kitchen which gradually built up over two or three days until it was unmistakably a decomposing mouse. There was nothing to do but wait until the smell went away. They were no trouble inside the house, we did trap one occasionally though. The penalty for living in the countryside. ?

I did wonder ?

It's not the cupboard under the sink, is it?

I do clean my sink, draining board etc etc and have been known to put down environmentally damaging bleach from time to time, plus of course it gets regularly flushed down with hot water and washing up liquid. But - every so often we have to dismantle the U bend under the sink because the design of it seems to collect odd bits of food debris etc which then seem to compost and smell.