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February 3, 2008
sewer smell
We recently added a laundry room to the garden level of our house. A few months following this job we started noticing a sewer smell in the laundry room when the top floor shower is used. The plumber insists that he hooked up the laundry to our vent. What could be causing this? There is no smell when the laundry, garden floor bath or kitchen are used.
Comments
I would first recommend having your sewer drain snaked/cleaned out. It should be done every year, though often people don't do it. If you haven't ever done it and now you have the laundry going through the same pipe, you may have clogs, etc and the additional may be overloading it.
Posted by: guest at February 3, 2008 10:44 PM
Another alternative might be that the drain trap in the laundry has dried out or somehow the shower is flushing water out of the trap (although I don't know how that could happen). I have a drain in my laundry floor and sometimes get a sewer smell. I pour some water down the drain to fill up the trap. This prevents any smell from coming back up. Or your plumber never put a trap in when the work was done and sewer smell is coming back up....
Posted by: guest at February 4, 2008 8:34 AM
things to look at:
improperly installed trap not creating water seal or is allowing sewage water from other sources to mix and stagnate in trap water
cracks/ breaks in vent pipes
buildup of smelly crud in trap and trap needs to be cleaned
sewer gas smells bad but stagnant dirty water also smells bad
Posted by: guest at February 4, 2008 10:55 AM
not vented properly
Posted by: guest at February 4, 2008 2:23 PM
before calling anyone please pour water into it. This is the cure for when the trap dries out.
There are devises that drip water into the trap so that you do not have to deal with this again.
MI
Posted by: guest at February 4, 2008 4:18 PM
sounds to me like your dryer vent is creating a negative pressure in the cellar by exhausting, and fumes from another source are being sucked into the space as replacement. The fumes may be coming from somewhere inside or out, but the fix would be to increase fresh air into the space equalizing the pressure situation.
Posted by: guest at February 5, 2008 10:32 PM
OK, but the smell occurs when the washer and dryer are NOT in use. In fact, I think it may well not happen when the washer is on.
Posted by: dt at February 6, 2008 8:36 PM
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