Ive not changed anything, and ive got rid of my garbage that might smell.
But 4-5 days ago there suddenly came a sweet rotten smell in my mini livingroom and my bedroom (connected). The rest of the apartment has no smell - and it comes from a certain area, and i cannot find any sources. Could a rat have died in my wall and make this smell? It Came all of a sudden, and there have been rats in our walls for 120 years, but not lately.
Any ideas? I cant possibly rips down all my walls to search for a dead rat if that is it?
My garbage is all taken out a while ago, so its not that.
Sounds like something died. A few years back, I had the same problem in my kitchen, which turned out to be a dead chipmunk under my stove. The cats had snuck it into the house, and it managed to escape as far as the stove before dying.
There are no missing persons, and no animals have entered the house second floor. But im thinking (scared) that there is a mouse or rat that died inside my wall. How can one find the place without ripping apart the whole wall or even walls..
Perhaps some search dogs, but i know nothing about that
And also, there have been no typical noises from rats in my wall. (I recognize them since we had them for many years. Many ÿears ago)
Could there be other things that make that sweet weird smell if something is wrong. I have the living room as a storage space for all my old consoles and games and lots of printers etc. Could Electric equipment make any smell like that? Im a gaming and console and computer collector. (Perhaps one of my game boxes got mould SUDDENLY… hmm I dont know
Seems doubtful - that smell is usually something that died. Look around for rotted food in the living room, just in case. If you have a cat, look behind boxes and under the couch for a hidden carcass. But it’s probably something in the wall.
I once twice had the dead rat in wall problem. Left to its own devices, a dead rat in a wall might stink for a couple months in humid conditions. The first one sure did. Never any sign of flies, just pervasive stink.
When the second rat happened I found a deodorizer that was some sort of powder / granules in a tub about like sour cream comes in. Take off the outer lid, leaving an interior perforated cover. So air gets in and the contents don’t get out. Worked remarkably well.
This stuff knocked the smell down in just a few days. Mucho better.
It was locally made around here and damned if I can find a cite for you for that specific stuff. But a Google for [dead animal deodorizer] returns lots of probably equivalent products.
We had a bizarre situation years ago, where we had a terrible stench of sweet rot. Eventually we figured out that ants had found the cat-food bowl and were taking food from it and caching it behind a bookshelf, where they had a whole breeding colony of rotten cat food. If you have a pet, it might be worth checking their food bowl.
From your description, that product MIGHT be something like these disposable dehumidifiers. I found them to be indispensable in humid Japanese summers. I would keep them in closets and dark spaces without much ventilation. Walmart and many other online and bricks and mortar stores carry them. Just search for “disposable dehumidifiers”. Some are also refillable, but one of the common the ingredients in them, the desiccant known as “calcium chloride,” can be caustic.
The odorizer that’s there to indicate gas leaks smells to me rather like something rotting; not exactly the same, but I mention this just in case, because if there’s actually a gas leak, that’s dangerous.
A sudden, sweet, rotten smell is most likely a a dead animal in the wall. It might take a couple of weeks for the smell to go away. One way to deal with the smell is to block off the rooms and setup fans to circulate air through the rooms. Use plastic to block off the rooms and put fans in one set of windows to blow air into the rooms and another set of fans in different windows to blow air outside.
If rats can get in, then other animals like squirrels, raccoons, etc. can also get in. The landlord should be notified and the holes patched up. There are pest control companies which specialize in this kind of work to trap critters and patch up holes. I’ve read that you should be cautious about using poison since it will cause the animals to die in place and you’ll be dealing with this problem every time they die.
The ‘rotten’ part makes me think something died. The ‘sweet’ part, OTOH, makes me think you may have an electrical fire about to break out. To some people, electrical arcing smells sweet.
We had a dead squirrel in the attic above my office, years ago. The deodorizer that @LSLGuy mentions helped a lot. The stink did fade, but it took a month or two.
Methyl mercaptan, the substance they add to natural gas to give it an odor, is in fact one of the major components of the smell of rotting meat. Which is not a coincidence: They needed something that humans would naturally be sensitive to and find disagreeable. One unintended side benefit is that gas leaks in remote pipes can sometimes be found from the vultures circling the area.
I had this smell. It was “near” my kitchen.
I do have a gas stove. Checked. No leaks.
Refridges were cleaned. No difference.
Under counter ice maker/dishwashers checked. (Theres a thing under the icemaker that catches about 2 inches of water run off, it gets filthy).
I pulled out everything from cabinets. No dead critters.
The walls are logs. So dead animals hidden there(I hoped).
The little hall way that leads to the garage is where the smell was strongest. So I cleaned it. I suspected shoes. This is where they land. That proved to be inconclusive. No strong smelling shoes.
One day I was sitting on the one step from the house into garage.
I have a box for fire wood out there.
The odor was horrendous right there.
It was summer, any wood in there had been there since winter.
The odor was coming from a large piece of rotting firewood in that wood box.
Got that out and no more bad odor.
That’s a month of my life I’ll never get back.
My kitchen was very clean, though.
Not to pile on with the doom-and-gloom, but it could be both - and animal chewing electrical wires being electrocuted, and the damage resulting in arcing or other electrical dysfunction.
Really, the OP should get the situation checked out.
