Hey I have a big problem, my wife and I bought our house 2 years ago and have been fighting with this problem since, within 2 months of living in our house, it rained about 1 inch or so, we came home and had an awful sewar smell in the house. We had plumbers come out several times over the next year and a half at different times when this happened and NOBODY can figure it out, they looked in our crawlspace and smoke bombed our house, looked at all our pipes and drains, at our sump pump and where it drains, then people for our septic tank came out and drained it, looked for cracks and checked out our distribution box, but still No one can figure it out, we have a finished basement and then we have a crawlspace where there was extra built on to the house, it smells the worse in the crawlspace and comes up into our master bath and bedroom and our kitchen and then to the rest of the house, my wife is so upset and cries because we can not figure it out and I am at my wits end with this problem, please please help us

This sounds weird but if you've had the experts out there and they checked out every possible problem like the septic,sump pump, etc. I have one possibility of what it could be... an entity or ghost. They can actually manifest smells that are generally obnoxious. If you've ruled out dead animals, etc. then this could possibly be the culprit. No I did not make this up just for you either. We have enties in our home that give us smells now and then but not of the obnoxious kinds. Pipe tobacco, cigaretts, cologne, gunpowder are some of the smells we have here.

If ghostbusters can't help you, try to see if the ground is stale. In some areas the ground has rotted vegetation from a forest or from landfill or from buried trash during construction. This rotted vegetation can easily cause the ground to 'spoil' and smell really bad. It is readily noticed when digging or disturbing the earth. The rainwater simply brings it to the surface.

Got to thinking about your question. Your house may be built on a hidden spring that is near the surface and when it rains all the stuff in the ground gets wet and hence the smell.

The spring can be under the surface by sometimes only a few inches. I have spots in my yard that fill up with water when it rains on a regular basis even though they are on a hill. The spots are not actually holes in the yard as I have the yard level and tried solving the problem by putting more dirt on the spot only to have it keep getting wet when it rains and having water pool in it. Maybe hidden was not the best choice of words, more like spring near the surface of the gound level would have been better.

While this might not help. We have the same problem. Including the Wife crying part. Our home is 1.5 years old. The smell comes in the morning and is terrible when we have a light rain. I have had 3 sets of plumbers to the house. We do have an injector pump in the basement and our septic bed is in the front yard (above grade from the basement). The smell starts in the utility room and lower (basement) bathroom. The challenge is that the utility room is the location of the injector pump, the main sewer line and the vent stack for the lower bathroom! WE have had the injector pump lid resealed we have had the toilet removed and reset. Still no solution. I'm beginning to suspect that the vent stack is somehow installed incorrectly (of course I'm no expert, but neither are the "plumbers" that come to the house). I have resolved myself that I will have to solve this mystery myself. We are pouring water in the lower bathroom on a daily basis, still the smell occurs.

I'm with Twinkie! Get yourself a Priest and exorcize the house to chase those pesky smelly demons out of there.**or** you could hire a " Dowser" to locate the spring. Cap it and pipe it to the house. The wet spots in the lawn would diminish each time you flushed and look at the savings on your water bill. Twinkie! For thinking Way-way-way out of da box you're hired! While your answers might no be much help they sure as hell are entertaining. Cheers and lottsa laughs! Tom

I grew up in a big city. As a boy, we used to predict rain by the noticeable smell of city sewers in the streets. It never failed. When sewer smelled - we packed our umbrellas ! Years later I have learnt what was causing that sewer smell in the streets. Let me share with you:

Have you ever seen smoke from a chimney kind of rolling over the roofs instead of raising straight up? This usually happens around rainy days. It is same with sewer gas. The only difference is that you can physically observe smoke but you cannot see sewer gas. It is colorless gas. When it rains ( or day before and maybe even after ), there is low atmospheric pressure in the air. As a result, your sewer gas doesn't really vent through the roof vents freely as it should. It kind of pushed down instead of drawn up by the pressure in the air and "hangs" low around your house, septic tank, plumbing vent outlets etc. - in some cases even hangs above the ground. You don't smell sewer gas during other days, because of wind presence or higher atmospheric pressure that drives sewer gas high and away from your house.

There is little you can do about it. It is Mother nature together with geo-location of your house. But in any case, I would check for any open sewer, sewer vents, and also seal on your septic tank cover. This way you will be at least assured that what ever sewer openings you have are properly closed and not contributing to your problem. Also, some plumbers forget to put clean-out plug back onto your sewer pipe when servicing your sewer pipe. That would allow sewer gas to freely roll out your pipe and contaminate your house. If that's the case, reinstall the plug.

After the Plumbers, Priest and Poltergeist are gone you might want to try Plastic and Purge. Cover the ground in the crawl space with Plastic and install an exhaust fan. You may also want to Pipe the gutter down spouts to carry Precipitation away from the Palace.