From time to time we smell a (to me) sulphur-type odor in one of our bathrooms. I can’t tell where its coming from and I can’t connect it to any particular activity like using the shower or flushing a toilet. I’ve never smelled the “sewer gas” that is supposed to be kept where it belongs by the traps but assumed it smells more like raw sewage than rotten eggs. Am I wrong on this? There are no leaks that I can see but there are plenty of pipes hidden out of sight. The vent stack is behind one of the walls in this bathroom. Anything obvious I should check before calling a plumber?
That somebody in your family doesn’t have gastritis?
Is it possible that a trap has dried up so that there is no longer enough water in it to prevent sewer gasses from entering the room? I used to have to pour water down the floor drain in the restroom at work from time to time since it didn’t otherwise get refreshed.
Every plumbing fixture with a drain has a U-bend. When stuff drains out of the sink/tub/laundry room or whatever, water pools in the low part creating a barrier keeping sewer gasses from coming up the pipe and into the house. If a particular U-bend is not used for a period of time, the water can evaporate out and the gas now has a means of coming into the house. Easy remedy: get water down that drain every now and then. (Ninja’d by Dickerman!!)
Another source of the hydrogen sulfide fragrance can be bacteria in the clean water supply. Normally you’ll get this when you turn on the hot water. Let me know when you work out how to fix this. My guess would be to replace the hot water tank because the culprit bacteria like hot water, but I haven’t done the anecdotal science on that yet.
That’s one of my secret super powers.
Every 6-10 months my gf will tell me she can smell sewer odor in the basement. I tell her I’ll check it out. When she isn’t around, I pour a bucket of water down the floor drain.
Later, she notices the improvement and thanks me for the “work” that I did.
Dickerman - this is a possibility that I will check when I get home today. There is another bathroom that backs up to the one in question on the next floor of our split-level. That sink hasn’t been used in a long time, maybe months. Perhaps the trap in the sink has dried up and we are getting the occasional whiff from there. I’ll pour some water down to be sure the trap is filled. I don’t think its the hot water tank for a couple of reasons. First, the hot water doesn’t smell and second, its a pretty new tank - less than two years old.
Sometimes you can get bacterial build up in a sinks overflow that causes an odor.
We used to have a flat in Brittany. The waste pipe from the sink in the bathroom was pretty small with a shallow trap. Whoever went there first in the season, had the job of pouring some disinfectant down the drain and opening all the windows to get rid of the pong.