House odour

I once found that the source of a horrible mysterious smell was a decaying plastic electric light fitting, the lamp holder bit.I cannot explain except that changing the thing finally banished the smell.

We used to have an unpleasant smell coming from the receiver end of our phone every time we used it. It really was horrible and I couldn't work out what it was. In the end we took the thing apart and discovered it was dried milk, which had presumably been spilt over it at some point.

My brother worked for Northern Gas, and was on the emergency team. He once went out to a home where the lady living there could smell gas. He ended up in the loft and found the body of her husband who had hung himself .

I had a strange smell in the bedroom many years ago, turned out our Springer dog had laid on the bed with a massive bone. He knew the bed was banned so when he heard me come home he must have panicked and it got dropped down behind the bed head and jammed

As others say, dead mice /rats give a gassy smell.
Since giving up having a cat around we don’t have a rodent problem! Ironic hey?

We had no smells but a dreadful fright when our cat brought a live rat inside during the night! He was on his way to drop it on our bed I am sure but I heard the clattering. DH was very much braver than me and he managed to catch it. I was terrified! The cat is not allowed out at night any more!

We once found a mouse had climbed up a curtain in between the lining and actual curtain. We found him quite by chance - explained why kitty was fascinated by the curtains!

Do you have a bathroom nearby? If a trap on the drain of a shower is allowed to dry out because of prolonged disuse the smell from the sewers can come straight up from it. We get this every now and then from our downstairs shower which is never used any more. Water run down solves it instantly!

When plastic overheats it gives off a foul, slightly fishy smell. Check all your plugs, lamps and anything else which plugs into an electric socket including overhead lights. It doesn't have to be switched on but gets much worse when heated.
Once discovered you can recognise the smell anywhere but the first time I experienced it I was driven to distraction for weeks.

We had a nasty smell in our living room when we got back from holiday last year. Having just had a new gas fire fitted before we went away we called out the installer to check for leak. Later I discovered a damp patch by the patio doors and discovered the wooden frame was spongy. When we had the patio doors replaced we found the wood frame was rotten and had ants nests in. The smell was caused by the rotten wood.

Thank you for all your knowledge on this subject. My husband put rat poison down before our holidays near an open hole near to the bathroom outlet. I bet the smell in the bedroom is the result of a rat crawling into a pipe. I’ll let you all know once I find the cause of the stinky gas like smell.

We had a strange smell that was not always there, turned out it was next door neighbours growing cannabis! !!

The smell coming and going is the clue to the chemical reaction between the mouse urine and the fibreglass as explained by the pest control officer who came to us. Yes there were corpses but they had disintegrated. I likened it to having a dead horse in the cavity - we sniffed the loft, had air bricks out, lifted the floorboards, the smell seemed to hang in midair in the room. It happened each winter just before Christmas and finally disappeared as spring approached. We had to move out of our bedroom once as the smell was so bad. Speak to a council pest control officer, they should be able to advise you. We had carbon beads in the cavity and doubled the loft insulation when there was a grant available to do so and it went, sheer joy!

As you say the smell comes and goes I'm not sure it would be a dead "thing". Surely that would be constant. Hope you find the source and it is an easy fix.

I agree this sounds like a dead rat or mouse and finding and removing the rotting corpse (horrible, disgusting task) is the first step to getting rid of the stench.

I advise rubber gloves and a scarf over your mouth and nose once you have found the creature's remains, newspaper to wrap it up in, and a garden fork or trowel if you have to scoop it up.

To get rid of the lingering stench, wash the floor or carpet where you found the remains ´well in hot soapy water and disinfectant. Put a bowl of vinegar in the room and a saucer of bicarbonate of soda (baking powder) as both these absorb smells.

If it isn't a dead rodent, I hope your plumber knows what it is.

We had a poor little thing that got into the bird seed bin and couldn’t get out and I just never saw him to rescue him as usual.

Yes I found him by smell.

possibly dead rat? They smell really evil (only way of describing it!!). I've had one in my basement area a couple of times, and the smell permeates the whole house if you know what I mean! I found some wonderful stuff on the internet (can't remember what its called) but if you google how to get rid of dead rodent smells you will get a couple of websites. The stuff I used was a sort of jelly which you leave, in its container, in the room where the smell is, and it absorbs the smell. No idea how it works, but I can guarantee it does! If I find out the name I'll let you know. Good luck. Odour control sprays do not work if its a dead rat.

We had dreadful smell in living room last year, turned out mice in the outside wall. pest control got rid of a couple of mice once they found where they were coming in but no way to get rid of ones in wall, short of tearing down whole wall. Had to wait for them to die, smell didn't totally disappear for at least 6 mths. Also occasionally have smell in laundry room but running water in anex for a while clear this altogether.

We had that same slightly fishy smell in our small front bedroom and my immediate reaction was to call in an electrician who checked everything out and declared it safe. We had bees in our loft at the same time and I called a local beekeeper who said that bees nests do create a smell and like omaoma once the bees had gone and nest removed, the smell disappeared. Wish I had known that before I paid forty quid out to the electrician!

One time we had terrible smell in a bedroom which came and went. It was a hot rotten fishy smell. Turned out that the plastic light fitting was being singed by the heat coming from the lightbulb. So the smell was only there when the light was switched on for a few minutes. I went to a friends house one day and she had the same smell. She was really impressed when I sorted the problem immediately!!!

A dead animal - mouse, rat, bird - in your cavity wall or in the loft will be the cause - the coming and going of the smell is indicative of different stages of decay and the effect of changes in temperature in the cavity wall/loft and the possible intrusion of air through cracks etc.

Can I point out a little known fact about the loss of a sense of smell (rhetorical question)! I lost mine some years ago but wasn’t concerned as my father had no sense of smell either during his later years. I subsequently went to the Doctor with various odd motor symptoms which were then diagnosed by a Neurologist as Parkinson’s! I then discovered on investigation that almost all Parkinson’s patients have no longer got a sense of smell and it is one of the earliest signs. If more GP’s and indeed laymen were aware of this fact maybe more people could receive earlier diagnosis of PD and thus earlier medication. It is bliss not to be able to smell nappies but sad not to smell roses, jasmine etc.

Yes mice definitely smell of gas . My friend couldn't find the blighter until she pulled out her fridge freezer . It was in the grill at the back.

Oh I know it so well - that smell is mouse urine mixing with the fibreglass loft insulation! We did try a pest control but that smell was even worse. Our cure seemed to be to double the amount of loft insulation.

I live in a very old house and have had all sorts of dead creatures dying (and giving off terrible smells) rats, mice, and birds all squeeze themselves into cracks under floorboards, behind skirting boards or in the attic. I think they get driven into a nice warm house by the cold. Sounds awful but if you can't find them the smell disappears after a while. We had something in the spare room which smelt terrible, but although we searched and searched we never found anything and eventually the smell went away - presumably when the house falls down they will find several skeletons - hopefully only of rodents or birds.