Ways to deal with the damp smell?

adg1

My bathroom smells mildly of damp, as though there is a pin hole in the tub and water leaks through slowly when we have a shower. I haven't taken the side of the bath off yet but it only really smells if we shut the door and go away for a week or so.

Under my sink also smells damp but thats the shocking plumbing work under there involving the washer/dryer/sink etc all connected as one.

Where do you store your clothes? Is it a built in wardrobe maybe that is on an outside wall? It could be an airbrick has been blocked up so air can't circulate? Or that there is condensation behind a wardrobe against an outside wall causing your clothes to smell and which emenates around the house slowly?

Good luck finding the cause but I'd start in the wet rooms (kitchen/bathroom) and remove flooring/bath side panel (:oI know I have't yet...) pull out your washing machine in the kitchen etc.

NEH

Wickedkitten wrote: »

In the last rented flat we lived in we had this problem in the bedroom and it turned out to be caused who knows how many years worth of leaves that had just been brushed against the house and forgotten about since the landlord didn't actually do any buildings maintenance.

Nope no leaves....

adg1 wrote: »

My bathroom smells mildly of damp, as though there is a pin hole in the tub and water leaks through slowly when we have a shower. I haven't taken the side of the bath off yet but it only really smells if we shut the door and go away for a week or so.

Under my sink also smells damp but thats the shocking plumbing work under there involving the washer/dryer/sink etc all connected as one.

Where do you store your clothes? Is it a built in wardrobe maybe that is on an outside wall? It could be an airbrick has been blocked up so air can't circulate? Or that there is condensation behind a wardrobe against an outside wall causing your clothes to smell and which emenates around the house slowly?

Good luck finding the cause but I'd start in the wet rooms (kitchen/bathroom) and remove flooring/bath side panel (:oI know I have't yet...) pull out your washing machine in the kitchen etc.

Clothes are stored mainly in built in wardrobes but none of them are on outside walls...

As for the bath panel i don't think if there was something behind there that it would cause the whole house to smell, may be wrong but I don't think it would...

Don't think we need to drag out the washing machine, it was working fine in our last place and it's only been in this place 8 months and there was nothing behind there when we moved in...

So it really it is a mystery....We'll see what the council and the Landlord says..

martindow

Have you tried a lot of ventilation? Throwing the windows open even on cold days. Drying washed clothes in a laundrette.

You are producing moisture living in there added to by clothes drying. The bulk of damp and mould problems are caused by lifestyle rather than the building.

NEH

martindow wrote: »

Have you tried a lot of ventilation? Throwing the windows open even on cold days. Drying washed clothes in a laundrette.

You are producing moisture living in there added to by clothes drying. The bulk of damp and mould problems are caused by lifestyle rather than the building.

Thanks for that, we have no other option but to dry our clothes indoors as we only have a drive outside filled with two cars and we live in a rural area and the nearest laundrette is several miles away...

and if you had read my post in the beginning then you would have seen that we have opened windows, we do even open them on cold days to give the place a blast plus we do have the heating on at least twice a day so we are already doing everything possible...

I also said that i had already searched the fourms and noticed the answer was to ventilate well which we have already done....

Fire_Fox

Just ventilating may not be sufficient whilst you have no window in the bathroom and persist in drying laundry indoors - even with the window open all the water will not escape. Bedrooms suffer due to breathing overnight. Many people understimate how much water daily living produces, I read six pints per person per day: more due to your laundry. You will probably not see condensation on windows at this time of year as the weather is not cold enough. I would try a powerful dehumidifier, this can also be used to dry your clothes more efficiently than putting the heating on and opening the windows. Then simply move the dehumidifier around the house rather than buy one for each floor.

NEH

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Just ventilating may not be sufficient whilst you have no window in the bathroom and persist in drying laundry indoors - even with the window open all the water will not escape. Bedrooms suffer due to breathing overnight. Many people understimate how much water daily living produces, I read six pints per person per day: more due to your laundry. You will probably not see condensation on windows at this time of year as the weather is not cold enough. I would try a powerful dehumidifier, this can also be used to dry your clothes more efficiently than putting the heating on and opening the windows. Then simply move the dehumidifier around the house rather than buy one for each floor.

Seen as two people have suggested that I am persisting with drying things indoors what would you have me do? The only other outside space would be the pavement outside which is half the size of a normal pavement due to a narrow busy village road, the blackness from the cars is already evident around our other front door, would you like all that dirt on your laundry? I do take exception when someone says we are persisting with it when we have no other alternative....:mad: May i also point out as stated in my original post that the smell was here before we came....

As for the dehumidifier i am not sure there would be one in our price range? surely not everyone has a dehumidifier in their houses and if the laundry was causing the problem, that is on the 3rd floor, i'm not sure it would go down 3 floors and cause the smell downstairs as well as all the other places...I have lived in several places where laundry has had to be dried in the house and it hasn't smelt so i don't think that can be the cause of this particular problem. Given also that even when we don't have any laundry the smell is still there...

There has no been condensation at all even over winter and we are well used to condensation as I said having both grown up with single glazing etc...

Anyway as i said in my previous posts we will hopefully get the council involved and also try to find out what the spots are on the carpet which are spreading...

F_T_Buyer

I would suggest you leave the extractor on in the bathroom all day. I have an en-suite with no window, and the extractor is on all day (at a slower setting) and i turn it off at night.

Also, use a dehumidifier too.Leave that running all day too, after a week or so you may only need it to run for a few hours a day.

adg1

I understand your frustration with drying clothes indoors but that wet air has to go somewhere and without ventilation it will simply settle on the coolest thing in the room.

Could there be a build up of damp/mould/moist air in a cavity wall maybe which is slowly making its way in?

Mayflower10cat

The Council, or specialist company, will bring a little probe device (lets call it a damp-ometer!) and prod all around the floors, walls, skirting etc., for levels of damp. From this they can see where the problem is worst (and the smell may not be helping narrow it down) and then work where the origin is. Internal damp can come from something as simple as a blocked gutter, water continually flowing down an eternal wall and seeping through. We had this in our first home, (old Victorian semi, no cavity wall) replaced the guttering and added an additional downpipe and it was cured.

My sister has had a problem with damp ever since they moved into their bungalow, almost 8 years ago. They kept suspecting the bathroom/shower but couldn't work out where the water might be leaking. Finally this year, they got a clever builder in who investigated the bathroom, pulled out a big heavy tall dresser in the hallway (backing onto the bathroom wall) and Oh my word! The wall was like a soggy sponge. Soaking, paint & plaster falling off, dresser starting to rot at the back. The previous owners had refitted the bathroom/shower room. It looked lovely, but their contractor hadn't used waterproof tile adhesive/grout round the shower......... Hard to believe, isn't it. Bizarrely, the tiles hadn't fallen off either!

NEH

adg1 wrote: »

I understand your frustration with drying clothes indoors but that wet air has to go somewhere and without ventilation it will simply settle on the coolest thing in the room.

Could there be a build up of damp/mould/moist air in a cavity wall maybe which is slowly making its way in?

I appreciate what you are saying but the fustration was at people suggesting that i was persisting in making something worst when the smell was already there before we started drying clothes in here....It has some ventilation as I said so it's not as though we have none and looking at humidfiers they cost a lot of money we just don't have at the moment...

All walls are dry, first thing i do when looking at a house is i feel the walls (sounds silly but with asthma you learn to do these things) If it's in the walls then that becomes the landlords problem as obviosuly being a rented house we can't do anything..

Mayflower10cat wrote: »

The Council, or specialist company, will bring a little probe device (lets call it a damp-ometer!) and prod all around the floors, walls, skirting etc., for levels of damp. From this they can see where the problem is worst (and the smell may not be helping narrow it down) and then work where the origin is. Internal damp can come from something as simple as a blocked gutter, water continually flowing down an eternal wall and seeping through. We had this in our first home, (old Victorian semi, no cavity wall) replaced the guttering and added an additional downpipe and it was cured.

My sister has had a problem with damp ever since they moved into their bungalow, almost 8 years ago. They kept suspecting the bathroom/shower but couldn't work out where the water might be leaking. Finally this year, they got a clever builder in who investigated the bathroom, pulled out a big heavy tall dresser in the hallway (backing onto the bathroom wall) and Oh my word! The wall was like a soggy sponge. Soaking, paint & plaster falling off, dresser starting to rot at the back. The previous owners had refitted the bathroom/shower room. It looked lovely, but their contractor hadn't used waterproof tile adhesive/grout round the shower......... Hard to believe, isn't it. Bizarrely, the tiles hadn't fallen off either!

I can well believe it. The apartment my brother lives in in London has had a few problems and they believe it is a fault when they were built a few years ago...needless to say it's getting worst and and there is 2 big buildings of apartments starting to be affected...shame the orginal builders/property developer has done a runner...:eek:

The council have got back to me today and confirmed that they can do the survey but we shall ask the landlord if he minds as we would like to maintain a harmonious relationship especially as we had major drainage problems last year and it nearly drove us all nuts dealing with Scottish Water...

So we're going to text him and ask him to come and look at the spreading spots as I know he'll want to see them and as I said the carpet is glued firmly down and we don't want to do any damage, we would rather the landlord do that and at the same time ask him about the survey...