My daughter and her husband bought a manufactured home about 11 years ago. When it was first set up, it had to be aired out for a few days to get rid of the chemical smells from the carpet, insulation, etc.
It’s a 3-bedroom home, and they have no kids, so two of the bedrooms were just used for storage.
The smallest bedroom seemed to maintain the “chemically” smell longer than the rest of the house, but since it was just for storage, they didn’t worry about it. But after about five years, my daughter started thinking about having kids, and she was worried that the odor was still quite noticeable whenever the door and window were shut even for a few hours (the other unused bedroom smells fine even after being closed up for weeks). It didn’t seem like it would be healthy for a baby to breathe that smell all night, so she started leaving the window open whenever the weather permitted. Since it was on the lee side of the house, that was almost all the time.
Six years later, unfortunately no kids. But, amazingly, that room STILL smells chemically after being closed overnight. This is 11 years after being built, and six of those years the window has been open almost constantly. And where they live, the wind blows almost all the time — you can feel a breeze under the door when it’s closed, so they have had good airflow through the room almost all the time for at least six years.
What in the world could it be? The odor is not the least bit suggestive of a dead animal caught in the wall or something, it’s just “chemically”, like a new car or a new house. There is no sign of any water damage or mold (first thing I checked, since I had a problem with a leak in my roof that caused some mold in the attic, but the smell is totally different).
How could it persist after 11 years? And what can be done to get rid of it, since they now want to move back to my state, but probably can’t sell the house with a problem like that?
Thanks for any help.