Weird smell!!!

MerylStreep

Cornflowerblue
I hope the problem was the freezer.
If it isn’t, do you know what cannabis smells like?
Obviously I don’t know how close your neighbours are but it’s possible someone might be close by in their garden having a smoke.

Yes it could be MerylStreep.

I agree with paint. I friend repainted her room and it smelt of urine, awful it hung around for some time.

Other than that does it smell stronger before or after rain.

Cornflowerblue
I hope the problem was the freezer.
If it isn’t, do you know what cannabis smells like?
Obviously I don’t know how close your neighbours are but it’s possible someone might be close by in their garden having a smoke.

cornflowerBlue, glad you have located the problem, even if it is proving tricky to solve. I was lucky in that my fridge slides out easily. I think you will still need to investigate the drip tray at the back, as the bleach will flush out some gunge which will still smell in the drip tray.

I have new fitted kitchen and it has apace underneath - the kickboards can be prized off. The smell in my kitchen was mould from a leak from the dishwasher - the damp had spread under the units and stank. Builder put bleach down and it sorted it.

I would be very surprised if there was no space under the units etc. - it is needed for pipework.

Is your fridge freezer by any chance a Liebherr?
I had this problem with mine bit also other brands have the same issue.

Check the back of the fridge. At the bottom of the fridge there is a little hole which drains water into a plastic container at the back. If food debris gets in then it starts to rot and the plastic well thing will fill with black mould and after a while start smelling really badly. I had the same problem with mine. You can remove the plastic container and clean it out. It is held in place with a wire that wedges it in place but you can bend the wire up and get it out.

A useful hint is to spray furniture polish on the floor when trying to move anything heavy. Be careful though as it can move suddenly!

Can I ask if you have used Valspar paint in the last few years, we painted our granddaughters nursery with it. It didn’t smell all the time but if the conditions were right, and we don’t know what those conditions were, the house used to smell of cats pee.
Valspar did own up to something contained in their paint that caused the problem and rectified it.
We did have to redecorate to get rid of the smell.

I had a bedroom with a smell rather like stale urine and eventually traced it to the lampholder of the suspended ceiling light, I had this renewed and the smell vanished.

Hope the bleach will sort the problem. When we had similar smell problem with a freestanding Belling fridge, which we were able to pull out, the non-removable drip tray was full of smelly gunge. The rather skimpy instruction manual had no mention of it.
I realised that occasionally an item (like cheese in paper wrapper) would get pushed to back of fridge and stick to back wall. Then a small bit would slide down and into hole with defrost water.

My FiL had this. Turns out it was a hydrangea!!

Well, just a bit of an update!! Think we came to the conclusion the problem must be the fridge freezer drip tray. Spoke to a fridge engineer who suggested we try to move the freezer ourselves before asking him to come out to sort it. So we duly emptied the entire thing, shelves, drawers, the lot. Then tried to slide a huge sheet of cardboard under it to help slide it out. Well, that was a laugh!!! It still weighed an absolute ton and wouldn't budge an inch!! However, whilst it was totally empty, we put a torch inside and inspected the entire thing and found a grill at the back of the freezer, which was 'hiding' a tiny hole to the drip pan (I hope!!) so we took a straw, stuck it through the grill into the hole and poured a bleach/water solution down the straw slowly. We would never have found it without removing all the shelves and drawers and using a bright light - we couldn't even see it when we emptied the contents, until we removed all the shelves too! Why do they make it so hard??We even rang Beko and they were no help at all!! Anyway, we did the same today. Still don't know if it'll work, but will give it a few days....... watch this space!! Thank you to everyone for all your advice and suggestions.

We have just had the same problem. Tried looking everywhere to no avail. To cut a long story short, we managed to pull the fridge freezer out. I couldn’t see how to remove the tray that the drainhose connects into but it was full of water and gunge. I used old cloths and kitchen towel to scoop it out, then cleaned it with a solution of bicarb.
Also poked a narrow brush into the drainage hole inside the fridge. I now leave an open pot of bicarb powder and a cut lemon and the smell has now gone.

Is your washing machine in the kitchen? Sometimes water sitting in the pipes or in the bottom of the machine can smell which would account for it not being there all the time as it would clear a bit when you use it.

Thank you everyone for your advice. We've decided that first of all, we'll ring the man who did all the work when we had the kitchen fitted and ask if he has any suggestions or advice, and possibly have a go at moving the freezer to check behind (as we can't), and ask him about anything he used to lay the floor. If that doesn't work, we'll go down the route of some sort of gas leak or drainage problem, but I think I feel now that it may be the freezer, fingers crossed!!

We had a horrible smell once for days. Discovered a dead rat behind the washing machine.

A friend last year had a really bad problem with a 'smell' in her house. She eventually got a plumber in. He located that a drain pipe had not been connected underneath the ground properly to the main drain. The waste water was just leaking into the ground beneath the house. Incidentally the waterboard have been coming around this area to check all homes with an extension. Apparently there are many extensions that have not had the drains from them correctly fitted to the main drain. Many are just left to drain into the ground! This is a problem all over the country they said. The smell arises when there has been a lot of rain. and the ground becomes waterlogged. I do not know if you have had an extension family recently.

M0nica

Could it be a gas leak? In a previous house we had an odd smell that came and went and it was a split in a gas main 100 yards down the road (we were at the highest point) and some of the the gas was coming up in our cellar and into the house.

I had an odd smell in my hall whenever I cam indoors, which I thought was due to the damp problems I was having, so I used to open doors or windows as soon as I got in.

A year or so after I moved in I was having my boiler serviced and the engineer did a check for gas leaks as part of the service. He discovered that there was a significant leak in a pipe that ran under my hall floor, there is a large space under my house and all the pipes are down there. He said I was lucky not to have been blown up when lighting my gas hob - my habit of opening doors and windows when I got home had probably saved me!

It took him five minutes to replace the seal but I felt very silly at not considering a gas leak for so long, I also stopped getting so many headaches!

Have you got a cracked drain.

Have you recently painted your kitchen? There have been reports in the press of dreadful smells caused by emulsion. Will find the link.

Ooh urrgh!
I was just going to say my money would be on a mouse, somewhere.
They can fit into tiny little spaces.

At our beach house we had this vile smell for weeks and weeks and eventually located it to the ceiling. A possum had got trapped and died up there. We had to make a hole in the ceiling to get it out and we buried the poor thing under a tree. It still has a lingering smell in that room. Here is a picture of it - it was huge !

We had the same problem. It seemed to come from a base unit that only had dishes and pans in. No food etc. Puzzled us for weeks. It turned out to be coming from the outlet pipe of the washer, a flexible pipe draining into a pipe going to the outside drain, if you see what I mean. I tipped a solution of bleach down it and the smell went.

On going from my previous post about aromatic vertical blinds …
I’ve just remembered that I had an awful smell in my kitchen which I could not source. Even got my neighbour in to see if she could help.
I turned out to be the drip tray smelly water at rear of (relatively new) BEKO fridge freezer. I cleaned that out & smell disappeared. From time to time I poke the drainage hole in the back of the fridge compartment to clear away any “goo” and gently squirt a small/tiny amount of weak bleach water down it.
Never have any issues now.

What floor covering is there sometimes if it’s tiles or cushion floor the adhesive can smell over time.