SOS My house smells and has been overrun by something (Mosquitoes)

catz747

Hello :wave:

I don't know which board to go in but in my home - there is a horrible sour milk / bin smell, I've no idea where it is coming from, I didn't get flooded but the smell has been about since not long after that. I've cleaned everything!!

Also there are loads and loads of these things - I think they're Mosquitoes, I can't open the fridge without them going in, I'm sitting here defending myself with one of those electrified fly swatters!

Does it have anything to do with my compost bin at the back of the garden or anything else I've done? Help I don't know what to do about the smell or the Mossies Any ideas please?

divadee

hi catz

i cant help with the smell. But there a hell of a lot of mozzies around at the moment.

we are having to keep windows and doors shut from about 5pm here or we are inundated with them.

I think the warm weather we are having has bought them all out!! I found 8 in little miss divadees room last night :eek: sucked them up with the hoover though!!

have citronella candles around is one way of keeping them at bay.

catz747

Hi Divadee! :starmod:

I've put some insect repellent on - still sitting here with my electrified bat - Hoover time soon

I think the smell might be the drains and sewers but it hits me when I enter the house, and in the kitchen, not upstairs. I smelled it in the street the other day as well, but in the house it's really bad. The floor is concrete so water can't have got under the house or anything.

Aaaargh ...... wonders where to buy citronella candles at this hour.




Mmmm shutting the [strike]giant cat flap[/strike] window seems to have helped, & my left over holiday repellent - so far ......


Apparently the smell is earwig slurry on the fields (according to the neighbour) :eek::eek:

economiser

catz747 wrote: »

Hello :wave:

I don't know which board to go in but in my home - there is a horrible sour milk / bin smell, I've no idea where it is coming from, I didn't get flooded but the smell has been about since not long after that. I've cleaned everything!!

How long have you had the smell and is it everywhere or in a particular room?

A couple of times we have had problems with smells but in particular rooms. Once it was a dead squirrel under the floor and I suspect the other occasion was something similar which we never found. Smell lasted several weeks but went away in the end.

We also had problems with a blocked and overflowing drain once but then the drains go under the house, which is unusual, and a manhole under the floor overflowed.

catz747

economiser wrote: »

How long have you had the smell and is it everywhere or in a particular room?

A couple of times we have had problems with smells but in particular rooms. Once it was a dead squirrel under the floor and I suspect the other occasion was something similar which we never found. Smell lasted several weeks but went away in the end.

We also had problems with a blocked and overflowing drain once but then the drains go under the house, which is unusual, and a manhole under the floor overflowed.

I looked everywhere for something dead but I didn't find anything. The next door neighbour said the smell is from earwig slurry from fields that aren't especially nearby but do cause smells over here. The smells been there about 6 weeks or so, so I thought it had something to do with the flooding, but the water drenched our garden, not the house.

Our floors are concrete, but it's just weird that the smell hits me when I walk into the front door of the house, and then smells in the kitchen at the back of the house, but not upstairs really.

msmicawber

I don't know if this helps, but I had a similar problem a few years ago when I moved into a rented house and eventually discovered that milk had got spilit in the fridge door at some time and had actually seeped into the rubber seal which has small holes in it. I pumped warm water and bicarbonate of soda in through the higher holes, then made a small cut in the bottom of the seal and just kept cleaning out the crap until I got rid of it all. It took a while, but the stench went and never came back and the insects went off to find a corpse or whatever other stinking thing interested them.

A friend had a similar problem with a chop that someone had dropped behind a radiator in the kitchen which ended up maggoty ... aaargh

catz747

Ewww gross! I'm gonna have to keep looking, I'm not sure about the slurry idea

Thanks for your help all, I'm going to have to brave the loads of Mossies upstairs now to get to bed :eek::eek:

real1314

Another possibility is that milk has spilt in your fridge - some fridges have a drain in the fridge that goes to the back, where there's a small "reservoir" sitting on top of the motor. This is normally to drain water away (it evaporates at the back due to the heat of the motor) but if you get milk in there it cooks it and creates an awaful stink. I think this system is normally just on frost free fridge/freezers but I might be wrong.