cantbreath
Oct 18, 2012, 07:15 AM
My basement is open to the rest of the house so any smell makes it's way upstairs. It's a 3 bedroom + one bed downstairs and has had 4-5 people living in it. I don't know what size the septic tank is but I just found a chart that for the largest size tank, it is due to be cleaned out. We've been here about 6 yrs. + 1 month. (New house.) For the past week the whole house smells like sewage. I can't figure out where exactly it's coming from. We have 2 sump pumps but the washer is upstairs so they don't run. We covered the 'vent' holes with plastic cups to keep the ping pong balls out of them. I couple months ago we had a problem of urine smell and I discovered my young teen was being too lazy to come upstairs to use the restroom and was using a cup and pouring it into the sump pump hole. Never again! I poured about a half gal. of vinegar and let it set for about an hour and ran a hose to it and ran both pumps a few times. With a window open, the air got better. This smell is definitely different however when I lifted the cups, I can still smell some urine odor. (So I ran the pumps again.) (I didn't put the vinegar that time, though.) Is it possible that this is caused because I need to get the septic tank cleaned out? The drains smell fine. And the water goes down the drains fine. Can it come through the walls? Help.