I am currently housesitting for some acquaintances while they are away on a cruise for a few days. So far things have been going reasonably well except for one problematic minor detail: STINKY WATER. These people’s house has the most eye-wateringly stinky water imaginable. It is beyond description. Turn on the tap, and GOD DAMN! The water instantly assaults the nose with its sulphrous, flatulent miasma. It’s not visibly rusty or cloudy in the slightest, just overwhelmingly laden with fumes of outgassing stink. You can practically see the waves of cartoon stinkiness wafting up like heat distortion over summer blacktop. How much stink can water contain before it doesn’t chemically qualify as water anymore? This house has hot and cold running stink.
How the hell do these people even live in the same house with such stinky water? They themselves have no detectable stink that I have ever noticed. Maybe they have some extremely efficient system to purge themselves of the stink. Or perhaps the water just doesn’t stink when they are here? Is the house itself reacting to my alien presence? There’s no way that this fugly deed-restricted McMansion is old enough for the dark emotions of its inhabitants to have generated such a malign supernatural presence. Maybe it was built over a Native American burial ground? I hesitate to even suggest that any tribe was ever this stinky though. Or maybe it was a Native American bowel ground. Is it possible to desecrate a bowel ground?
Before they left, the owners thoughtfully pointed out the guest towels so that I could make use of the shower if I so chose. My current plan is to rot in hell before I allow even a single molecule of their water to touch my body. There is no possible way that lack of showering could make me any more stinky than their water. Some things should just not possess a distinctive odor, and water is one of them.
The stink is so bad, it’s hard to believe it isn’t intentional. I have started to wonder if I might be caught up in some sort of elaborate prank? Am I being filmed right now? The stink may be warping my perception of reality.
Are you outside the city limits? Sounds like the water might be coming from a well. There are systems for getting rid of the smell. Maybe they have one but it’s not working.
How long will you be there, without showering or brushing your teeth?
Yep, you’ve got well water. Bring in your own bottled water for most uses. If you have to do laundry, they’ve probably got Rust-Out™.
Personal hygene can be problematic. Showers/baths can leave you feeling dirtier than when you started. I’m curious, as is AuntiePam as to how long you’re house sitting.
It sounds like water with a lot of sulfur in it. We have a lot of well water in the area with that rotten egg smell. I don’t know how people live with it, but I’ve been told it’s perfectly safe, and the smell doesn’t transfer to everything it touches.
My well water is sulphurous and smells and tastes bad. When city water became available I jumped at it.But the woman who owned my house lived here until she died at 99, so I guess it’s healthy. In fact, my dogs and horses will choose to drink the well water over the city water or freshwater creek.
When I grew up I would spend summers in Florida with my dad, and there were neighborhoods there where you had to roll up your car windows if you were driving around while people were watering their lawns. I once went to a day camp there where they served that shit to drink. I dare you to find something grosser to drink (that isn’t actually dangerous) than strawberry Kool-Aid made with rotten egg water. gag
We have well water that stinks like that; a water softener helps a bit, but we drink only filtered water, obviously. Fortunately, the smell isn’t that noticeable in the shower – it seems much worse out of the sink taps, for some reason. And I don’t find the smell sticks to you when showering, either; of course, I use lightly scented bath products just to make sure I smell human.
The biggest problem with the water is the amount of iron in it – if a toilet is left uncleaned for 5 days, it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years just from the disgusting rust that precipitates out of the water. Fortunately, I’ve found a cleaner that works on it, but I had to go through about a dozen first.
Yes, it is disgusting. But you learn to deal with it.
You know, I know a guy in Berkeley that lives in an apartment complex. I used to go nuts, wondering what that smell was in his house, until finally I realized that he suffers from the same affliction.
In his case, it’s because the building used to be a fairly low-cost motel. For years and years. At least, I hope that’s all it is.
We have wonderful well water - tasty and non-stinky. But for years, we lived in Florida and had varying degrees of nasty water - some from wells, some from municipal systems. My daughter’s last place (she just graduated and moved) was on city water, but it was still sulfurous and nasty. Eastern Orlando, if you’re curious. My inlaws used to live in Jacksonville, and their city water was not only smelly, it had stuff floating in it. I hated when we visited them, since I drink water to the exclusion of just about everything else.
Yeah, stinky water is the devil’s tinkle. <shudder>
Well water checking in here in Akron, OH… It’s never been stinky, ever. For awhile before we got our newest water softener it turned everything (including my dishwater blonde hair) orange, but it’s never smelled or tasted bad.
“You know, I couldn’t find that egg that someone lost here since Easter.”
or perhaps:
Give them some of the stinkiest water you can find in the house to drink upon their return and tell them they look thirsty. If they drink it right down, you’ve solved that mystery. Of course, you still have the mystery of what happened to their sense of taste and smell, but that’s a different story.
or maybe:
Buy some sulphur from the store and leave it at the entrance of their house when they get home. If they don’t notice, there’s no point in asking about the water. . .there’s bigger problems there.
I hope those helped. Good luck!
Well, yes. . .but is it coming from the water or somewhere else?!
Well our summer cottage had a well, and the area has a high sulphur content. You essentially run all the taps and pull off about a hundred or so gallons, and the stench goes away, and the sulphur level goes away. It is only when the well sits unused that the stench gets a chance to build up.
Good luck!