I have a question concerning a noxious smell coming from our bathroom. The smell is coming from the closet that holds the water pump, instant gas water heater and water tank. For the last couple of weeks the smell has progessivly gotten worse. It smells like a mixure of gas and sewage. We live in a very rural location and have a septic and get our water from a drilled well. At this point I do not know the size of the septic but I do know it was put in 4 years ago, has not been pumped or had any maintenance done to it, and at the time was put in for a one bedroom house. Only my wife and I live in the home. I am wondering if it is a problem with the septic? My wife gets frequent headaches when she comes home from work and is quick to notice the smell. I however work out of the home and only smell it when I go into or pass by the bathroom. Due to living in Maine we are unable to air out the bathroom very often in the winter due to the outside temperatures. I am wondering if it might also have something to do with the "stink pipe" venting out of the roof from the bathroom being clogged. Any thoughts or advice would be grealy appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd

Is there a floor drain in the closet that holds the water heater etc. If no water has been poured down the floordrain for a long time, the trap may have dried up, cuasing sewer gas to enter the house through the floor drain. If there is a floor drain in that room, or any room for that matter, dump some water down it to reseal the trap.(before dumping water down, look into the floor drain with a flash light, if you don't see any water, this is most likely your problem. You should see standing water in the floor drain pipe at all times). Please let me know what you find.

MGD77,
There is no floor drain in the closet. The house is built on a slab and the only thing on the floor is the attachment for the water tank where the water comes into the house from the well.

OK, let me think on this overnight, hope I can come up with something. If you could just smell around and find where the smell is strongest, it would help. I know once you get the smell in your nose, its hard to tell where its stonger. You may try going outside for a few minutes to clear your smeller, then go back in and try again. I have a tough time locating odors myself, just takes some time, but hopefully it pays off. Good luck and let me know what you find.

MGD77,
I was wrong about one of my replies. The closet holding the tank and heater is pretty tight so I did not look behind the water tank. There is a hole in the slab back their that has a 3-4 inch wide plastic pipe. It looks like at one time their was a water line because of the brownish color that only comes up to a certain height. I do not know what this drain does because there are two lines that come out of my water tank. The first goes to the water heater and water lines to the house and the other plastic tube comes out of the water tank and goes back down that drain hole behind the tank.

Can you take some pictures of this and post them here? Would help.

I have attached some pictures. The pictures facing the water tank show the water line in question running to the right side of the tank and going into the drain hole behind.

Ok, this is not a drain, it is just a sleeve for the incoming water pipe. Nothing to worry about here. (it may even be your well, take a flashlight and shine it down, how far down does it go?)

Either way, this part doesn't lead me to believe your smell is coming from here(unless you have very bad smelly water).