I do not know what is related to what. So the story is:
We had a lot of company and someone clogged the toilet. It is a Toto, and so that almost never happens. It was a little difficult clearing it with a plunger, but no big problem. The next day the bathroom smelled horrible The smell comes and goes Sometimes it smells fetid, other times like a rotting animal, once like bad shrimp. It is usually from the bathroom, but sometimes seems to come from the hallway outside.
All plumbing currently functions well and flushes. It may be improving.
What can I check to discover what the problem is? Could it be a vent stack, despite the fact everything drains. Might it be a coincidental dead animal in the wall?
Any possibility one of your guests stuck some dead shrimps inside a curtain rod, or some other sneaky place? A mean trick, but an effective one. People will go crazy and starting ripping out drywall . As for plumbing, anything stuck in the trap of the sink? Any water at base of toilet? Perhaps your guest’s discharge dissolved the wax seal…
In clearing the clog, the toilet was probably rocked enough to break the wax seal. An inexpensive first fix would be to caulk the the point where the toilet meets the floor. I bet that will do it.
Isn’t that a really bad idea? I’ve been told that you should never caulk around the base of a toilet, because if you do, and there is a leak from the wax ring, then the water (and whatever else!) just pools up under the toilet where you can’t see it. Better to have a leak show up straight away, not sit there festering invisibly.
I HATE replacing wax seals. I think that I will try the calk as a simple test. If the smell goes away then I know it was the wax seal, and can remove the calk and replace the seal. If the smell stays then I can remove the calk. Either way I will have removed one thing from the list of possibilities.
It is a powder room, so there are limited places to attempt malfeasance. However, all of the guests were relatives, and I consider some of them suspect. Therefore, I will check everything. We served shrimp salad, so there was plenty of raw material for sabotage.
One additional possibility. A bird (I guess technically a bird family) has homesteaded in what appears to be a clothes dryer duct accessible from the outside of the house. I do not know how it figured out how to lift the flap while flying. The chimney swifts from last year almost drove me crazy. I guess word of a sucker gets around the animal kingdom. Anyway, the yammering of the babies has just become evident, so I guess they have hatched recently. Could this stench be related to them? Do bird nests stink. Although the duct probably does not connect to the bathroom (I am honestly unsure where it connects) it is close by and might share the same air space over the ceiling.
You said you smelled shrimp and you served shrimp. Check the bathroom garbage. I’d want to be sure that someone didn’t take some, decide the didn’t like it, but want to be polite and wrap it up in their napkin (or spit it out) and toss it in the bathroom garbage later.
It depends. I never caulk a new installation until I’m sure it was successful (doesn’t leak). But for toilets that don’t currently leak, it can be cosmetically advantageous depending on your floor material. In the OP’s situation caulking is a valuable diagnostic tool. If it solves the problem, he will know there is a leak in the wax ring.
This is probably a tangent, but commercial bathrooms have floor drains. Like all drains, those drains have traps that rely on water being in the P or J curve of the trap. If there hasn’t been a spill and the floor is not sufficiently wet-mopped, the water will dry up - and presto, you have an open pipe to the sewer, wafting gasses, stink and shrimp smells up to you.
I learned this years ago when I went into our building bathroom to find a co-worker carefully pouring a pitcher of water into the floor drain. It’s one of those :smack: of course things that is probably more common these days, when heavy wet-mopping and washdown aren’t done as much.
Those seldom used floor drains are also a great place for crane flies to breed. I couldn’t figure out where all the crane flies were comming from in our shop bathroom and locker room until one day I saw them climbing out through the strainer.
put a bird/animal guard over the dryer vent; it’s a plastic cage that fits over and around the dryer vent which allows the vents to open when the operating.
Proper maintenance is not only to make sure enough water goes down them to keep it filled and flushed, but to dump a little sanitizer/insecticide there, too. It’s forgotten by all but the best maintenance guys.
If it is the birds, then likely an egg or chick did not make it. But if they are in a dryer vent, I would think only the place that would be stinking would be…wherever that vent begins…bathroom exhaust?? In any case, the chicks should be about ready to fly.
Please do tell if the source of the stench is ever identified. V
Haven’t figured it out yet. Another weird thing is that it is intermittent, and of varying “strengths.” It is also hard to characterize, although definitely unpleasant. Not really “shit” but along those lines. I think it is closest to cadaverine, or whatever makes dead stuff smell like, um, dead stuff.
It seems to be getting less over time, which to me also suggests a small dead thing. IF I ever figure out what it is (and I won’t be tearing out walls anytime soon) I will be sure to let everyone know.
