Bathroom Fitting

Constant damp/musty and occasionally sewage smell driving us mad!

Anonymous user 23/02/2024 - 3.05 PM

Four weeks ago we moved into a rented house in Cornwall. It's about 250 years old, semi-detached, solid stone walls, slate tiled roofs; ground floor has slate slabs with more modern slate tiles in hallway and newly created downstairs shower room. We have a septic tank for water and sewage waste, with a cleaning management system in the back garden. The new shower room seems to be the root of the problem. The last tenant was something of a DIY enthusiast who never seemed to finish anything properly, and turned a smallish room at the back of the property into a shower room with lavatory & basin. There's an awful damp musty smell that pervades the shower room (ST),the whole of the adjoining sitting room, and up the stairs (adjacent through the wall) and drifts into our bedroom at the opposite end of the house. It is constant and so unpleasant it's making us miserable. The house appears dry and damp-free on the ground floor. A workman for the landlord replaced some slipped slates on the roof last week and cleaned soil/vegetation from gutters as there were signs of water penetration in the upper floor ceiling;, however no damp smells coming from upstairs. First thing we noticed wrong in the downstairs SR was when we attempted to use the loo - it hadn't been fixed to the floor and rocked alarmingly! The men who came to sort the roof seem to be general handymen, and one of them has now sealed the loo to the floor with some sort of mastic, and packed out between cistern and wall so the unit is now solidly in place. We and he have checked for water leaks from loo & shower, and can find nothing. The handyman did comment on what appears to be a drainage problem. I don't understand what he said but it seems that something to do with drainage from loo is several inches lower than it ought to be - he said it should be higher than the toilet cistern - and whatever 'it' is has been sealed up inside a box type unit next to the toilet. We air the house every day by keeping the large back door open, also windows, and the SR window's constantly open but with absolutely no improvement. We've mentioned the problem to landlord but on the day he came we had had doors wide open and so the smell had dissipated to a large extent. It's worse first thing in the morning, in the evening, and when there's been heavy rain. Yesterday following heavy showers there was an actual sewage smell in the ST. It's making us both miserable and we are concerned about possible infection; I've had a sticky sore throat ever since we moved in. Would be grateful for enlightenment and possible remedies so we can pass this onto the landlord. I'd add that I've lived in an older house in poor condition with a cess pool, and never got smells like this, and in concrete built bungalow in the Fens, which had a septic tank and was next to a canal, and again never experienced such smells. Can only conclude the last tenant has been messing with things he didn't understand.