I moved into a Grade II listed rental in March and soon noticed an odour on the staircase/landing near the bathroom, like dirty public toilets. The agent and maintenance said they couldn’t smell it, but told me to report back if I found the source. I explained: no blocked or overflowing drains outside, no external drain smell, the odour is isolated to the landing, worse in rain or wind, and not solved by keeping plugs in bath/sink. I also noted I can’t see an external soil/stink pipe, which may be relevant. I’ve tried a HEPA purifier, air fresheners (make it worse), charcoal bags, and odour sprays, with no success. My concern is that sewage gases are escaping into the loft or house, I can’t think of anything else. Am I overlooking something?
Are you a tradesperson and able to answer this question?
You probably do have an open venting point in the property or a fault AAV valve in the loft.
Simple investigations can be done and smoke testing of the drainage system to locate open pipes not immmediately obvious. If the system has rainwater flowing into it the smell will get worse when it rains. If you notice the smell early morning and late evening when people wake and return from work and shower it most definitely will be a venting internal pipe. Hope this helps.
This could be a number of things. The first thing to check is are there any unused items. For instance a bath, shower, toilet, basin/sink that doesn’t get any use. It could be that you have an issue with siphonage where water is being pulled out of a trap. This could be due to things like a badly installed stack pipe, partially blocked/blocked vent pipe, air admittance valve on the stack pipe failing.
It could also be something simple like an open end somewhere in the property. For example I have found before an overflow pipe behind run straight into a waste pipe rather than outside causing drain smells in the property.
I’d suggest hiring a professional to take a look for you. But if you think it could be due to siphonage try regularly added water to unused sinks etc to see if that eradicates the smell, putting plugs in won’t with baths and most sinks or basins as they usually have overflows which the smells can escape from.
Hope this helps
Gary
So often, it's worth checking to see where the stack (main waste pipe) is located. On top of these stacks you'd have an automatic air vent, or AAV for short. They're designed to allow the waste system to vent. However, they should keep smells out.
What you can find is when they fail, they can actually allow the smell of the drains to radiate outwards. So it's easy to smell it.
Drains have quite a pungent smell that's rather distinctive.
If you find you don't have one, or the one that's there is fine, I'd look at seeing if there could potentially be any stagnation with the toilet, sinks or any other appliances around the area.
Being a very old building, I'd also suggest seeing if there's any old manhole covers or drains near that could have had a seal perish
