Stinky water

Factual Questions
1

The cold water tap in the bathroom sink delivers stinky water. Kind of a sewery smell. The cold water in the deep sink in the laundry room doesn’t stink. The cold water in the washing machine doesn’t stink. The cold water in the kitchen sink doesn’t stink. The ice cubes and the water in the fridge don’t stink. The cold water in the shower and the water in the toilet tank don’t stink. It’s only the cold water in the bathroom sink that does.

I’ve found if I run the cold water for about 10 seconds or so, the stink goes away. I tried letting the water run for five minutes the other day, but the smell came back later.

  1. What is the cause?

  2. What is the solution?

2

Is the trap under the sink working properly? … it might not be the water that stinks but as the water displaces the air in the drain pipe, the sewer smells are waffling up … how wet is it under the sink?

3

Watchwolf49’s suggestion is spot on, a lot of time people mistake sewer gas smells for water smells. Fill a glass and take it to another room, see if it still smells there. The sinks overflow drain is a leading cause, bacteria grows in there and gives a smell when the air is dispaced from normal use.

If the smell is not the drains, first step is try bleaching the line. How you can introduce bleach can be a challenge. If the smell returns after that swap out the sink feeds for copper one’s, the braided supply lines have a correlation with sulfur smell.

4

Some municipal water supplies have strong sulfur odors. The only solution in my old house was to install a whole-house cartridge filter and water softener. I could tell every time the softener would get low on salt. Ewwwww.

5

This. I have exactly the same problem (and it happens a little bit in the kitchen sink too). But I have figured out that it is definitely some stench coming up from the drain, not in the fresh water from the tap.

Try disinfecting your drain somehow. Pour bleach into the drain and let it steep all day.

6

Could be hydrogen sulfide getting created if you have a lot of iron in your water. My house does that too and one of the faucets in the house is as the end of the piping system, so the gas collects there. Running the sink will make it go away. Or lighting a match. The plumber says it’s the iron in the water reacting to the anode in the water heater.

I have to use Iron Buster water softener salt in the water softener or all the faucets do it pretty bad. Water tastes fine.

7

I don’t know what the problem is, but the solution is calling the water company. I had this problem years ago & I called the water dept. They sent some guy out who tinkered around in my bathroom, did some stuff with the pipes on the street, etc. Can’t recall AT ALL what he said caused the problem, but he fixed it and I never got a bill. :cool:

I’m sure a plumber could also fix it, but he’d send you a bill.

8

Thanks.

9

I agree that it’s the drainpipe not the water, but possibly from a clog. Had the same problem in my old house.

You can try boiling water, or half a bottle of dish detergent (let sit for a few hours to penetrate/break up clog). Bleach will probably kill smell but won’t break up a clog I don’t think. Drano or similar has never worked for me.

You can also try this:

https://www.amazon.com/BAAM-87000-Drain-Blaster-Cleaner/dp/B00HPMPPWY

or other mechanical devices, or a good old drain snake. No personal experience with these.

In my old house I was never quite able to make the problem go away and when I had the bathroom redone I discovered why: the crap-ass plumbers who redid the bathroom for the prior owners left the pipe full of debris including chunks of metal.

10

Why would the smell only come with the cold water, and not the hot water?

11

Dunno, but the same question applies to the “sewer gas” solution.

boytyperanma had a good idea, draw a glass of “stinky” water and carry it into another room–does it still smell?

12

Look at the bright side, it could be your dishes smelling like wet dog when you try to eat or drink with them. I looked everywhere for a solution to this intermittent problem. It appears for no apparent reason (unless cold blustery weather is somehow the reason), and then goes away for no apparent reason. The water department just looked at us like we had two heads and were talking in a foreign language. Interestingly, I have noticed the same odor from my water glass at the local IHOP.

13

Johnny LA, are you in Spokane? For some reason I have this idea in my head that you’re a Spokane local like me.

14

Around here, stinky /hot/ water is a problem with some water heaters, and ??? can sometimes be fixed by changing the anode ???

But I don’t have iron pipes.

15

Birch Bay.

16

Well, I got the stinky smell this morning from my bathroom sink–this is a different house, but I’ve had this problem in the current place too, and cleared the trap with little difficulty.

Then I flushed the toilet and all hell broke loose–toilet overflowed, tub and shower filled with shitty water. Now the plumber’s under the house fixing the line to the curb.

Maybe it IS worth a visit from a plumber or rooter person to check this out.

17

Funny story: There used to be a tavern that we’d frequent now and then that had the absolute BEST food…yet the more the toilets were flushed…the more the place would smell like sulphur, especially in the bathrooms. Got to the point that we’d have to cover our faces with our shirts in order to use the facilities on busy nights, it stunk so bad!!

We used to call the place, “Stinky Point”, it was sooo bad…and we ALL know what sulphur smells like!! Can’t believe the place had such a following as it was always packed!!

The problem was from the well though…as it was sulphur. Best tasting well water ever as they had a filtration filter on their bar system…yet none on the bathroom system.

People that frequented the place often just sort of got used to it I guess…yet the second we walked into the place, it smelled like rotten eggs…and I naturally blamed my new hubby who’d never been there before…

His reply was, “Wasn’t me!! Good GAWD, who cut the cheese!?”…putting it nicely as my hubby swears like a sailor. He turned around and said, “We’re outta here…that things got HANG time…someone’s a darned pig in there…”

Joke was on my hubby though as again, he’d never been there before!! All the way home he complained about the pig that stunk up the entire bar; how sick and wrong it was to do that during the dinner crowd…spoiling appetites, etc. Said the guy that broke wind like that needed to see a doctor!! LOL!!!

The fact that my hubby couldn’t understand why I couldn’t stop laughing my butt off as he went on and on about how disgusted he was at the person that could do such a thing “in a public place right before people eat dinner”…and that the person should get some manners and seriously see a doctor…

I couldn’t stop laughing and he found that strange also. His reply to my laughter was, “I don’t understand how you find something so disgusting as that funny…you don’t see ME doing something like that. At least I wait until I get home!!”

That made me laugh even harder…and he started laughing too. Said, “Well…it’s true…” At that time we were both laughing as he said, “Feel sorry for the poor guys wife he’s going to blame it on since there’s no dog around…”

Never did tell him it was the sulphur wells that made the place stink…HA!!

18

Do you have a flexible plastic pipe connecting the tap to the wall outlet?

Sometimes those plastic pipes get moldy on the inside and will make the the first few moments of water smell bad.

:slight_smile:

19

Moderator Note

memyselfandi, we prefer that old threads in GQ only be bumped to provide new factual information. Since this does not, I am closing it.

I also note that eight of the nine posts you have made since you joined yesterday have been to bump old threads on smelly subjects. I am instructing you to stop this. If you want to post on the subject, start a new thread in the appropriate forum, and link to the old one.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator