Hi,

We've been re-doing our upstairs bathroom, and therefore have been using the bath rather than the shower while we re-tile.

We've noticed an increasingly strong smell in our utility room downstairs, emanating directly after we empty the bath, and dissipating after a couple of hours. The utility room is an addition to a 1953 house, basically a room linking the house with what was an outside toilet. While there is a toilet in the room downstairs, the smell doesn’t seem to be emitting from it.

The bath is draining into a drain on the back wall of the house. It’s not clear where the toilet in the utility room drains to – the soil pipe goes straight down into the floor. The upstairs toilet goes into a soil pipe that goes down the external wall of the house. There is no adverse smell in the upstairs bathroom, even when we didn’t have the toilet connected.

Could anyone suggest where we start with identifying the source of the smell? The fact that it’s in a completely different part of the house is stumping me! All help appreciated.

Cheers, G

When you drain the tub is there any noises coming out of the washer stand pipe?

Thanks for the response! I just tried it with a half bath of cold water. No sounds from the standpipe the washer waste is connected to, but also, with cold water in the bath, no smell yet.

Will try again with hot water and report back.

Incidentally, no idea if this is relevant, but the kitchen sink does gurgle when the dishwasher is on, but that's in a different (but adjoining) room and feeds into a drain about 8 feet further towards the utility room.

With hot water there is still no gurgle, but there is now a faint smell.

I think you might have solved the location mystery with your suggestion of the washer standpipe though. It feeds straight into the drain that the bath empties into.

I've also just found out that my girlfriend put a small amount of bleach into the kitchen sink today as she thought there might be a slight smell. And now the smell in the utility room is far less...

My conclusion would be that the drain needs bleached / cleaned, as the standpipe doesn't have a u-bend unlike all the house connections. Would that sound reasonable? If so, how would you go about bleaching it?

the standpipe doesn't have a u-bend unlike all the house connections.
Whoa! Are you saying the washer stand pipe connects directly into the main with out a "P" trap?

Err. Not necessarily. Well yes I obviously did just say that, but bear in mind I have very limited plumbing experience, and have only owned this house for about 8 months, so it's quite possible I'm talking nonsense :-).

The washer waste hose goes into a standpipe provided which heads off under the utlity room floor and appears to drain into the same storm drain system as the bathroom and kitchen. There is no trap evident on the sections that are visible, although obviously I have no way of knowing what there is under the floor.

There is no trap evident on the sections that are visible, although obviously I have no way of knowing what there is under the floor.
Let's check and see. Take a broom stick and stick it down the standpipe as far as it will go. If it comes back with a few inches of water on it then you have a trap, if it comes back dry then you have a open connection between your house and the open sewer allowing sewer gas to enter your home every time something's drained or flushed. In addition to smelling bad sewer gas is harmful to your familys health and the methane content makes it explosive. Let me know what you find. Regards, Tom