I feel like crying because we can't get rid of this smell in the house and it is driving us crazy. We have our wedding reception at home in a few weeks time and I am getting really worried that we won't be able to get rid of it before then.

It all started 2 or 3 weeks ago...from one day to the next our kitchen started smelling really bad. Not only the kitchen but also the living room area (all on ground floor)...then you would get a bit of the smell upstairs, in the bedrooms and landing. The only place that seems to be sort of immune or only occasionally gets a bit of a bad smell is the bathroom.

We've cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom...no luck the smell always comes back. The area that seems to smell the worse it the kitchen near the fridge and the part of the living room that is next to the kitchen. Everytime we think we have found the problem and get on our knees or climb on a chair to sniff closer the smell is not there. So it seems like the smell is in the air.

To help to me it smells like : old cheese, wet cardboard, a bit like earth. I don't think it smells like rotting but I've been living with it for so long now that I don't even know how to describe it anymore

There doesn't seem to be anything leaking...at least not that we can see.

Things that might be possibilities but again I am not sure are:

-just above the kitchen we have our bathroom. The toilet always makes a horrible noise when we flush it....it almost sounds like the pipes are banging together (the house is very old...about 200 years).

-also just above the kitchen we have just noticed that some birds have made a hole in the roof/gutter area and they are have built a nest. Could there be space between the outer and inner wall and some of the things they have used for building the nest have fallen down and are trapped in the wall and are producing this smell? Maybe eggs?

Sorry if this post is totally confusing...I am getting really frantic because we rent this property and the managing agents are absolutely useless. They are clueless like us...they have no idea where the smell is coming from and have no idea who to call to take care of it.

I am hoping that maybe someone here will know. Maybe some suggestions as to what it could be might point us in the right direction.

Thank you in advance if you can help.

labman

Some refrigerators have a pan in the bottom next to the floor to catch spills or water from defrosting. Pull the little grill off the front and see what you can find.

A 200 year old house may have been built with balloon framing. The same 2 x 4 runs from the roof to the foundation. Anything, dead birds or other animals, etc., that falls in at the top, can fall the whole way down. I am not sure how you would clean something out if that is the problem.

I hope some others post ideas too.

Jumpin'JackFlash

Thank you labman. We've already checked the fridge and that is definitely not the problem. We are having someone come in this evening to move the fridge, the washing machine and the cooker to see if something pops up behind them.

Could you explain a bit more about the "baloon framing"? Does it mean that there is space between the inside and outside wall like I am suspecting? Maybe I should add that just above the fridge there is a vent....and I really think that almost directly above on the roof it's where the birds have made a nest. If there is space between the two and things (or animals) have fallen down there that is why it might be smelling so bad.

What worries me too is how are we going to get there? Breaking the wall sounds like the only way to me

The most confusing part to me is:
1- we can't figure out where the smell is coming from exactly
2- we can't identify the smell...it reminds me of the house I used to live in when I was little. It smells like the cellar we had. We mainly kept wine and cheese down there. Everything of course was very damp...so that is what is seems like to me : dampness, wetness, cheese, ewwww lol I'm ok with this smell in a cellar...NOT in my kitchen and living room

DAVE231

Could be sewer gasses backing up into the house. Do you have any plumbing fixtures or drains where the trap may have dried out? Traps must have water in them to block backup of sewer gasses. Tough problem. This is just a wild guess. Run water into any drains you don't use regularly.

labman

Dave made a good suggestion I forgot.

All frame houses have cavities between the outer sheathing and the wall board inside. That is where pipes, wires, and ducts run. Outside walls should be filled with insulation. Modern construction has a floor and plates at each level blocking the cavity. The old balloon framing, the cavity goes the whole height of the house. Unless blocked off, you could drop a rock from the attic to the foundation. Older houses also will have lath and plaster inside, much harder to repair after cutting open. I am short good ideas on what to do.

The pan I mentioned is not inside the refrigerator, but under it.

Jumpin'JackFlash

Thank you both...it all makes a lot of sense and they are all things we are going to have checked out.

If the house is indeed the way you described then maybe something has fallen into that hole that the birds have made to make their nest and it all got trapped. That would explain why the smell is more noticeble above the fridge where the vent is.

Ugh I really am not looking forward to whatever has to be done to find the source. I hope it's something that can be done without too much fuss...yeah right

Now I need some volunteers to go put some sense into our useless managing agents

Jumpin'JackFlash

Ah well I thought I would come back to say what the problem was since you were so nice.

A guy came to move the fridge and we found lots of cat hairs stuck to the wall and when we sniffed we realized that a cat must have peed down the back of the fridge. So we started scrubbing the wall, the back of the fridge and the floor thinking that was it...well then we got on hand and knees to scrub the floor we looked on the fridge's condenser and tadaaaaa a dead melted mouse

Aren't you glad you just read that?

Soooo now all is well, trying to scrub everything still to get rid of the smell.

Thanks again to those that tried to help...it was good to have someone to moan to while waiting