I have two questions. First thing: We just bought this house and moved in 3 weeks ago. The water was not turned on when we were looking at the house so we didn't know about any leaks or odors.


1) In the basement laundry room there is a pretty strong "fishy" odor. It's really hard to pin point where it's coming from, but it seems to be from the drain in the floor (this seems to be the storm drain as I'm told by my Dad and his co-worker. The water in there is very dirty despite we've been flushing it with clean water for 3 weeks now. The smell was not there when the water was turned off. I have put bleach down all the drains in the area and it seems to make the smell go away for a while but I think the bleach smell just masks it and doesn't fix it.

I know that both bathrooms seemed to be linked with the storm drain. We've flushed it with gallons and gallons of hot water and the smell won't go away and water won't go clear.

Any ideas what it could be?


2) This odor just started about 15 minutes ago. We hooked up washer and dryer finally last night. It has been running since last night with a few loads and no odors. I was in the shower when the washing machine suddenly kicked in (didn't know he had put clothes in). About 45 seconds after that, suddenly the bathroom smelled really badly like sewage. Nothing else in the house smells. The water was still perfectly clear and nothing backed up in the drain. I tried sniffing the water and it didn't stink - it was as if the air smelled...

Any ideas on this one maybe?

Thanks in advance,

K.Kitty
:confused::confused::confused::confused:

Describe your floor drain. Is there one hole in the bottom and one hole on the side?

Hi,

There is 1 bottom drain that goes down, and then 2 side drains. I took a picture, you can really only see 1 of the side drains in it. I focused more on picture that shows what appears to be most of the concrete has deteriorated. There's major amounts of water in random empty space around the drains. It looks like it's just been washed away but maybe that's how it's meant to be. The spot I'm talking about that looks like half of it is missing is the jagged parts on the left.

I don't know enough to tell, so I hope this picture helps.

http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr138/kaorina/laundry_drain.jpg

Note: I put it as a link because I don't see a way to thumbnail in the posts and don't want to waste people's bandwidth unless they actually want to click on it.

Your floor drain looks suspect. Try covering the whole thing with plastic-wrap(make sure to creat a good seal) and see if this doesn't solve the problem. Just a place to start, and we will go from there. Hopefully you will get some more advice from other helpers on this site.

I can't believe I didn't think of that before.

I have some really thick plastic wrap my dad bought for when they were redoing the bathroom at his place; It should work great!

I'll trim a little piece off and wrap it all up.

It will probably take a few days before I can give you an answer as to whether that is stopping the smell or not. Some days it's lighter than others.

Thanks for the tip, I'll let you know as soon as I find out.

:D

Mygirls has given you a good start. The floor trap may be nearly totally gone so here comes your sewer gas. I also think you vent stack is partially blocked and allows sewer gas into the home when your new washer drains. Newer washer can over power both a 2" drain as well as an old cloggish vent. Rod the vent from the roof top to basement floor plus 20' more.

Hello, from the looks of the picture you have a big problem with that floordrain, and covering it up with plastic is not going to resolve this issue. It looks like the sewer is backing up and running out of the drain which means that you have sewage running beneath the concrete that's causing the major odor problem. You should have a licensed plumber take a look at it so you can have it taken care of as soon as possible. You don't want that to continue that way. You may need to have the sewer line rootered out so it doesn't keep backing up into the basement drain. Goodluck ----zeke----

Good answer truck. I only suggested the platic as temporary measure to see if indeed this would solve the smell problem? I should have mentioned that if indeed it does stop the smell, the floordrain must be corrected. I try to solve step by step to find the source of the problem. There are many factors in a plumbing system, and I do the best I can to give helpful advice(such as yours).

Ps, ballengerbs advice is also note-worthy.

A few extra things I feel I should have included in my first post:

The fishy smell in the storm drain has been there since the water was turned on, about 3 weeks ago.

The washer was just put in 2 days ago.

So the fishy smell isn't related to the washing machine :)

Also, the water was off for 2 solid months before we bought the house, in average temperature weather.

I am not seeing a way to go back and EDIT my post but I also wanted to add that I just went to take more pics and investigate it further again, and suddenly I am seeing sewage in there and toilet paper that wasn't EVER present in earlier inspections. I've never seen the pipes actually fill up enough for it to be places in the position it's in - really strange, and really worried about the cost now.

I'm just a 24 year old college student who bought her first house :( Please tell me this isn't going to be an astronomical cost to fix!

If you are seeing toilet paper and human waste in your floordrain, start by augering the house sewer as truck suggested. A blockage in the house drain will cause sewer gas to enter the home. If you don't know how to do this, or feel that you aren't capable of the task, I hate to say it is time to call a plumber.
I truly hope they can get the job done correct at a fair price(still going to cost a bit). Good luck and take care.

Price range for cleaning a sewer can vary from $60 to $200 (depending on hourly rate of your location) if its an average job. If you are looking to get other problems fixed(such as your floordrain) you are not going to like the cost. If you do hire a plumber, make it clear that you want the problem fixed as efficiently and low cost as possible... (however, know that most low cost fixes on these type of things are only temporary)

Okay, thank you!

I'm not able to do the auger part myself, but I have a friend coming over likely on Wednesday that is going to just survey it and give an estimate as he does plumbing as well.

I'd rather end up paying out the cash to fix it, than pay the cash to clean up the mess it causes if something horrible happens, and THEN pay to fix it.

Thanks so much everyone for all the info, I will hopefully keep the post updated with what we find out just in case anyone else should ever have a similar problem.

Hope you get it fixed. And please do let us know what you find. Good luck. Hope all goes well.