Odd smell in my unit - help!!

[Susie5]

Hi everyone,
I've had an odd smell in my unit - not exactly a bad smell, but noticeable anyway, since I started hosting.  It is much stronger in the winter so seems somehow related to the heating. (or is it just that the windows are closed? hmm.)  I had the plumber in yesterday who basically scratched his head, said "ummmm....." and gave me a bill for $104.  I have baseboard hot water heating and I have tried to see what could be causing it.  So far no luck. I also had the drains cleaned and those guys punched a hole in the pipes, which meant I had to cancel a booking, which made me lose my superhost status... needless to say this **bleep** smell has me flummoxed!  It has already cost me about $2000 in plumbing bills alone.

I Febreze the hell out of it just before someone arrives, and that lasts for a couple of hours, but then the smell comes back. I have  had only one guest mention it in a review - it's a smell you get used to somehow, but I would really love to have it gone. Any ideas for what it could be, or how to cope with it, would be very welcome!  Susie

[Cynthia-and-Chris1]

Maybe place some Scentsy wax warmers around the place to disguise the smell until you can figure out the source?

[Susie5]

I am going to look for these - thanks! 

[Linda108]

@Susie5  Odors are quite tricky.  Since you are in a unit instead of a detatched home, it is possible that the odor is coming from another unit and only noticeable when the air is trapped during the winter.  Odor attaches itself to carpet and even wall paint depending on the source.  I wonder it an air filter will help.  At this point, it would probably be best to consider masking until the weather changes and you can open the windows to fresh air.  Best of luck!

[Susie5]

Thanks! I'm going to try the air filter option!  I hadn't ever thought of it.... that's why this kind of forum is so useful.

[Andrea9]

@Susie5

A dead mouse under the floorboards or the wall will cause a bad smell. I once had that in an apartment long ago, and not knowing what it was, it drove me crazy Febreezing all the time, until somebody visited who recognized the origin... Took about 3 months for it to stop.

[Susie5]

THanks, I had wondered about the mouse option but the smell has been present for so long -- at least 15 months -- I would think any dead mouse is long gone by now, and yet the smell continues..... stay tuned for the next installment of the Smelly Saga.

[Robin4]

@Susie5 This is a common issue for the forum....Hosting leads to smells, be it cooking, smoking, hygeine, or just plain abnoxious behaviour. I have done a number of posts on this topic and if I feel the host is really serious about what they are doing....and when I say that, you have 76 reviews, so I would classify you as 'serious'....then I suggest you put in an air flitration unit.

Good quality air filters are not expensive, although avoid the bottom end of the market which utilises Ozone filtration! There is serious talk amongst health authorities around the world at the moment that ozone filters should be banned because a build up of ozone molecules leads to lungs problems.

We have had an Ionising Hepa filtration unit running in our cottage for 5 years now and it has paid for itself many times over because, no matter what the last guest did in the cottage, the air is fresh and clean for the next guest.

We use a Whirlpool 'Whispure 2000' filtration unit which runs all the time, and guests do not even know that it is there....I have built it into the air circulation system in the cottage. But every guest makes mention of how pleasant and neutral the cottage air smells and, interestingly enough, allery sufferers say that their hay fever symptoms virtually disappear when they are in the cottage for any amount of time!

This filter cost us around $250.00 US five years ago, and has possibly been superseeded by other models since! It covers an area of about 30 square metres so it would not cover an entire home adequately but, it does cover two or three good sized rooms. In it's basic form it comes on castors and can be wheeled from room to room. I would advise you to Google air filtration and read as much as you can about it and select a filter that best suits your needs....

Susie, it's a cheap investment if you are serious about your hosting!

Cheers.....Rob

[Susie5]

Thanks so much to all of you for your suggestions!! I am thrilled to learn about air filters (what rock have I been living under??) and have purchased a Whirlpool Whispure model (not the model you suggested, Rob, I coulldn't find that one, but this one is about $300 and does not use ozone).  I also bought some additional filters which I will replace regularly.  

I did consider the mouse option as there are (or have been!) mice in other parts of the house (it's an old Victorian, circa 1870 with many holes and hidey places) but it's not that kind of smell, at least not to my nose, and it has continued for at least 15 months now. But I must continue the mouse battle on all fronts in any case, especially now that winter has arrived. 

Thanks so much to all of you - I am happy to spend $300 to possibly solve a problem which has already cost me $2000 and my Superhost status. I'll keep you updated on how well this option works....

All best wishes for the Holidays to everybody! Susie

[Robin4]

@Susie5   That's great to hear Susie, I am sure you won't be disappointed with the results. My one note of caution....this a room filter, it is not a whole house filter, and if you try to push it to more than about 35Ms (that's about 380 square feet) its performance will fall away noticeably.

For a couple of years I was reticent to promote this purchase because I did suggest that it could help  someone I knew with an odor problem they were having and despite me telling them of the units limitations they tried to do a whole house with it and ended up telling me it was a bloody waste of money!!!

My listed cottage including the bathroom and laundry is 44Ms which is 'pushing the choke a bit' but as I said, I have built this filter into the air system and it runs all the time so does a better job than something that is switched off and on. With a power consumption of 18 watts it doesn't chew through a lot of power!

And on that note, people can be mis-trusting of strange things, and if they see it and don't recognise it, they will turn it off, even if you tell them it's for their own good....and it won't do any good turned off!!

For others considering a filter purchase....and this is possibly turning into a technical thing and you may glaze over, but it is all important! You have to decide what you want to remove from the air, Every smart salesman on the planet will tell you you need a filter that will remove particles down to .009 microns! Many hospital operating theatres don't go down that far. We purchased our Whispure unit as an all round filter it removes particles to .3 microns. 

This graph gives an idea of relevant micron sizes and is helpfull in making a decision as to what you should purchase.

You can see by this graph that just about every molecule short of herbicides is going to be removed by a .3 micron filter. Interestingly Bacteria which is a really important one is .5-20 microns so that one gets trapped, but HIV doesn't!!!

Sorry about the length of this post but this question comes up so frequently in hosting. Most of you are professional in what you are doing and want to achieve the best results you can for yourselves and your guests and, knowing what I know now, I would not hesitate to make this purchase again.

Good on you @Susie5 ........and welcome to clean hosting!!

Cheers.....Tob

[Susie5]

Hi again Rob,

thanks again - no worries, the smell is confined to one room of the 2-room apartment! although the smell does drift up to the second floor when it gets strong. I will keep you posted on the results of the filter. I don't have a central air handling system - I use window air conditioners etc. - it's an old Victorian house with lots of quirks.  So charming (until it's not!)

all best wishes,

Susie

[Linda108]

@Susie5  Wow you sure have provoked a great deal of response.  I keep thinking of the game, Clue.  Are you familiar with that game?  People try to find the culprit.  We all have our favorite "bad guy" - rug, dead mouse, neighbor...  Keep us posted!

[Susie5]

Hello everyone,

Well, I'm on day 2 of the air filter and it has helped a lot!  I have let it run at medium speed for about 48 hours.  The smell is much diminished, but not gone - and now there is a new twist. In trying to track it down, I sniffed the sofa, the rug, etc. but nothing.  

Then I put my nose right down to where the floor meets the wall, where the baseboard runs, and I think I smelled gas.... well needless to say the plumber will need to be back to check that out.  I don't think the bothersome smell is a gas smell, but I will definitely have it checked out.  Oh the joys of a cranky old house!  

[Robin4]

@Susie5......Well that is certainly a persistant smell if it has not gone after 48 hours and it sounds like the smell is being introduced at a rate faster than the filter can handle removing it!

I will give you some typical examples that we have struck Susie!

1/. We had one guest who smoked inside the cottage and it took about 6 hours for the filter to remove all traces of the cigarette smoke.

2/. One female guest overdid it at a wedding reception and vomitted on the carpet. She felt absolutely devastated and was much relieved when after 2.5 hours all traces of the smell were gone.

3/. We hosted a couple from Shanghai who cooked some sort of exotic meal in the evening and next morning they fried our supplied eggs and bacon without using the extractor fan, but by lunchtime there was no odorous smell left.

Of all odours cigarette smoke appears to take the longest to remove.

Our cottage being 80 years old tended to suffer from mould issues during the colder months but the filter has entirely elliminated that, and when I posted a response to your original post Susie, I was concentrating more on the smells that guests leave behind which are transient smells and much easier to deal with than a long term persistant odours which are being continuously regenerated.

If worst comes to worst you may have to contact your local government Environmental Protection Agency to have an officer come to your place and track down your persistant odour. They do have the equipment to do that. We have such a department and officers here in this country, I am sure you would have there too.

I am intrigued now, we have not come across the odour that could not be removed  so I am interested to know the outcome of this Susie....keep the forum posted.

Cheers.....Rob

[Susie5]

Hello everyone!

A few months ago I posted about an odd smell in my unit. I tried everything - bought an air filter, used candles, Febrezed the heck out of it... nothing helped.  Finally I put my nose to work in a micro-exploration - I got down on my hands and knees and sniffed everywhere, inch by inch, and guess what I found:  a gas leak!  very small, but there nonetheless. What I was smelling was very dilute gas.  I got the gas company out to confirm my finding.  The house is an old Victorian built in around 1870 when they used gas for lighting - every room has an old link to a gas pipe where there used to be a gaslit sconce.  So the house still has old gas pipes throughout and one of them had developed a very small leak.  Nothing dangerous but enough to give this smell - not really a "bad" smell but off.  The plumber has now tracked down and capped off all the branches of pipes which don't serve any appliances e.g. dryer, stove, etc. and we're good to go.  Smell is gone.  Thanks to all of you for your suggestions and encouragement!  

Susie