Is it a matter of weeks? Months? Years?
This toilet in my office smells funny. It’s not dirty, and I wonder if some of the traps have dried out. Also, whenever I go on holiday, I wonder if I should do something about the traps in my house.
It depends. Normaly I would put it at weeks.
a floor drain has a P trap.
ordinary toilets have the trap built into the toilet, there is not a trap in the drain pipe like there is below a sink or tub or floor drain.
the wax seal that seals the toilet to the drain pipe might be failing and letting sewer gas out. this seal has to be intact because the water trap for the gas is in the toilet.
you have traps in sinks, tubs, floors and washing machine drains. all can dry in time depending on the drain opening and pipe size. run water into all drains every six months and you are good, a quart of water slowly will refresh a trap.
Oh and what do sewer gases smell like?
You’d notice.
it might be similar to outhouse (badly vented) or swamp smell.
Not exactly like an outhouse, perhaps worse. We had a wax seal go bad. It took me a long time to find it. As long as the furnace or A/C was running, the air circulation kept it from building up to where I could smell it. My wife never could.
Not that big of a job to change if the 2 nuts holding the stool down come loose. One pipe joint.
My wife came home before I got it back on. ‘‘While you have that off, why don’t you redo the floor?’’