[radgurl]

We just moved into this house 3 months ago and the smell coming from the living room wall outlet is horrible. It smells like a mix of cat food, dead animal, and fish. Just plain UGH! It took us forever to figure out the smell was coming from the outlet. The smell comes and goes. We thought the people that lived here before us had animals that went to the bathroom on the wood flooring and that it soaked in, but the smell is coming from the German & American plugs in the house, but only one set of them in the living room where we plug in the television. We live in Germany and are an American family. The house we rent has 110 & 220 volt outlets in one strip on the wall. I don't know how to explain it. It looks like this picture,it has 2 German style plugs, but the 3rd plug is an American plug. Any ideas of what this can be? Below is the link of what the plug looks like.

http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/gudella/gudella1002/gudella100200083/6491546-electric-outlets-on-red-wall.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.123rf.com/photo_6491546_electric-outlets-on-red-wall.html&usg=__-A-N4rGQJ0TTvsqfWYZXGw4vtrY=&h=801&w=1200&sz=100&hl=d e&start=185&zoom=1&tbnid=doEvOQQKx-qbWM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=177&ei=Rs6CTpSVBbPc4QTX94V6&pr ev=/search%3Fq%3DAmerican%2B%2526%2BGerman%2Bplugs%2Bt ogether%2Bon%2Bwall%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dde%26client%3D firefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D674%26tbm%3Disch& um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=836&vpy=136&dur=52&hovh=18 3&hovw=275&tx=144&ty=65&page=11&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429 ,r:12,s:185

[joypulv]

I'm not going to go find your pictures but I will say there probably is a dead mouse in there, very common. Possibly cat food too, brought into the walls by the mice.

[NeedKarma]

We had the same issue with one of our outlets when we plugged an air conditioner in it. It turned out it had something to do with a mix of aluminum and copper wiring that was literally starting to burn. The smell as as you described it. Once we got our outlets changed by an electrician to ones that are geared for that the problem went away.

[tkrussell]

While the odor may be from a dead animal, I think it would be wise to have that outlet checked by an electrician to be sure there is not an issue with loose connections or some other wiring issue, as suggested Needkarma.

An animal may have chewed on wiring, got to be dead, and caused the wiring to be damaged and is heating up and burning inside the wall.

[ma0641]

Depending on the age of the wall box, older bakelite boxes emit a similar smell when heated too much. Open up the wall box and look inside or have an electrician do so. However, you could easily have a dead animal in the wall space and it is very common to have air movement into a room, from the wall cavity.

[Kyle_in_rure]

We had an outlet in our garage that was emitting a smell similar to what you described, it smelled like something was dead in the wall. It turned out the outlet was backstabbed and the connections were loose, and the outlet had slowly been burning as well as the wires. While it could be a dead animal, I would certainly get it checked out.

[radgurl]

Thanks everyone. :)

[radgurl]

Thanks everyone, I am waiting for housing to come and take a look at the outlet. I will let you know what they say. :)