There's this really musty smell in the bathroom and it won't go away, and then it does.
What on earth do you think it is?
It's a mystery smell and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask A House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to us by MyCleaningConnection.com
and that is a resource hub for some really cool stuff.
One of the things that's cool that you'll find on there, is a whole section on how to
create and make recipes for your own cleaning supplies and detergents.
So, if you're trying to save some money, and you're trying to make some non-toxic environmentally
friendly, eco-friendly, green cleaning supplies, that are cheaper than the ones that you buy
from the store, you can find those on MyCleaningConnection.com
All right, so on to today's show, which is about the mystery smell.
So, I get this email from a lady, and I'm going to read to you the email, so that you
can hear all the different steps she's gone through to try to get rid of this mystery
smell, it was kind of interesting.
She says, "Hey Angela, I have a question for you.
My husband and I have a vacation rental business and we've been property managers for about
15 houses in Florida, and I've been running into this reoccurring problem at some of our homes.
There's this strong bacterial smell, that smells like an old locker room, in one of
the bathrooms.
I've used several different enzyme cleaners on the entire bathroom.
I've removed and washed all the fabrics, the towels and the drapes, but the smell remained
until one day before an arrival, then we went to ready the home and the smell was gone.
After a few turnover guests, the smell returned, and this time it came back in another bathroom.
Then, I have the smell in two of the other houses that we maintain, and it lingers for
a few weeks, and then it eventually fades, and I have no idea what could be causing this.
I regularly wash my microfiber cloths and my mop heads, but any advice would be greatly
appreciated because I'm so confused."
All right, so here's my answer.
This is a common problem believe it or not.
What it is most likely, are dead rodents, that have found their way up the pipes and
they've died in the drywall of your home.
Here's how it works.
If there are crawlspaces on the property, and that's where there's a little bit of a
brick build up.
Now, some Florida houses have this, some do not, but if you'll go around the perimeter
of your house with a flashlight, what you're looking for are any holes that are about this
big, the size of a quarter, or smaller, okay?
You're looking for something that's that big, or smaller, and if it's a hole, it's possible
that a little mouse, or even a big mouse, could have weaseled their way in there looking
for little cracks, little crevices, even a crack in a pavement.
If they can squeeze their little bodies through, they will climb underneath the house and they
will work their way up the pipes.
Now, they can hear running water, and mice and little rodents and snakes, love water.
And so, they've got to have something to drink every now and again, especially if it's hot
outside, which in Florida it is.
They're going to climb towards those cool pipes, are looking for some water.
As they get underneath the crawlspace of your house, what happens is, they work their way
towards the pipes and they can't get in okay?
The pipes are sealed off, but they can hear the running water and they think, "Well if
I just work my way up, there's got to be an opening somewhere."
So, if they work their way through the house, through the pipe system, oftentimes they will
get caught in the drywall somewhere.
Mice are really great about eating through drywall, but if they get tired and they get
confused, and they've eaten through something and it hasn't produced any results, oftentimes
they will be very, very close to the bathroom outlet, and that's either coming through a
pipe underneath the cupboard or the shower head, where they hear the water.
They'll get very close to that, but they can't get through.
A lot of times, because where the showers are, they're bricked off with tile or fiberglass,
so they can't bust through that, and they will die somewhere between the drywall and
the fiberglass of your tub.
Or they will die underneath the vanity inside your bathroom.
So you can smell it, and as their little bodies rot, it produces this awful musty little smell,
and then after a couple of weeks, the smell goes away.
What's really bizarre is this.
You can actually prevent animals and rodents from climbing underneath your house.
We actually had to do this at my house, because a snake got in.
Scared the living daylights out of me, because I don't do snakes, and I certainly don't do
them inside my living room.
All right, so what happened is, we went around the perimeter of the property, and there's
some hardware cloth, I think is the proper term for it.
It's one fourth in diameter, and it's a metal sheet, and you can just take a pair of scissors
and you can cut it, so that it is whatever size you need.
What we did is, we folded them inside little tiny pockets, and we stuck them inside all
the crevices around the little crawlspace door and other areas around the perimeter
of the house where maybe a snake could slide in.
The snake was inside I'm sure, looking for mice, because it was a rat snake.
So, he's looking for mice, which means the mice also got in there as well.
Any little holes, and there were the little doors, the little flappy doors that go around
the side of the crawlspace, there were a couple of those that had been chewed through.
The hole wasn't very big, again, it's about the size of a quarter, but what we did is,
we took the hardware cloth and we put it behind that grill, and then we zip-tied in and out,
just like we're sewing, in and out, we zip-tied a little mesh, so that they couldn't climb back in.
We went around the perimeter of the house and we repaired all the little holes where
mice and rodents could get in.
Then what we did was, we took some silicone, and if there was a little area that wasn't
conducive to sticking hardware cloth in there, we would fill it in with silicone, so that
snakes and rodents and stuff like that could not get in.
So, there are a couple of things that you can do on a do-it-yourself basis, and we actually
hired somebody to come out and do it, and that was like $400, it was really expensive.
I realized we could totally have done that ourselves, with a thing of silicone, which
is like two bucks, and some mesh hardware cloth, which is probably five or six bucks.
We totally could have done it ourselves.
I went around the perimeter with him, so that I could see what it was that he was doing,
and so that I could watch and learn.
What was really interesting is this.
The little rodents and the animals keep going inside your house, and they go in it two times
of the year, when it gets really hot outside or when it's really cold outside.
They're either looking for warm water, or they're looking for cold water, but they can
die, and the guy explains to me how this happens.
There are lots of dead rodents that will get inside the drywall of people's houses.
And so that is the smell most likely that you're smelling.
It is a mystery smell, you can't see anything, you've got nothing to prove, but one of the
things that he mentioned and it was really interesting, because as we opened up the kitchen
cupboard underneath my kitchen sink, there was a little area that had been cut out, so
that the pipe could come through for the water pipes, and around that area, there were little
areas that a mouse could have climbed through.
So we closed off that area with some hardware cloth.
What we did was, we recut the area, so that it would fit right next to the pipe, so that
it would cover the gap between the sink and the pipe, so that nothing could get in there.
Then we siliconed that around the base of the pipe and the inside of the cabinet, so
that a mouse couldn't pop it off or chew through it.
The hardware cloth is thick enough that they can't chew through that.
Those are just a couple of tips.
There was another sink that had a small area, we didn't do the hardware cloth on that, but
I took a magic eraser and I squeezed it down in there, so that the mouse would have to
eat through the magic eraser if he wanted to come into the house.
Anyway, I've never seen another mouse since, so it must be working.
All right, so I hate that you have the mystery smell, because that's spooky.
It's hard to explain to a customer, especially if this is like an Airbnb, and a rental vacation
or what have you, because nobody wants to come into something that smells musty or weird.
Anyway, so that is my two cents for today.
I hope you get rid of the mystery smell.
I hope that you do the perimeter walk of your house, and that you fill in all the holes
and all the gaps, so you can't have rodents and mice and snakes sneaking into your house.
All right, that's my two cents for today, and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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