<p>Hoping the wisdom of CC will again solve the day. </p>
<p>Short version: one of our cats developed a kidney issue & urinated outside the box back in the Spring. We treated the couple of areas and there were no after effects. We had him put down in June after it returned for the worse. Since June there have been no odors at all and we’ve never had an issue before.</p>
<p>Last week we had a lot of rain due to the remnants of Lee. All of a sudden on Thursday our office (where the litter box is, and where we know Rocco had an accident) started stinking like crazy. DH goes into attack mode. We pulled everything out of the corner, got rid of a bookcase and treated everything with Nature’s Miracle. Saturday the house smells lovely; not a remnant of odor. Sunday morning, I read the paper in there and all is well although we decide that we’re going to use this as a springboard to replace the downstairs flooring. Sunday afternoon we get another rainstorm and immediately the stink is back.</p>
<p>DH pulled up carpet & padding tonight & treated the floor. I believe he has a date with a carpet knife tomorrow.</p>
<p>I am convinced that there has to be a connection between the rain and the odor and that potentially the crawl space is involved. I’ve spent about an hour reading about crawl space encapsulation and I think I know less than before.</p>
<p>Any wisdom? We’re going to go ahead relatively soon with the flooring anyway, but we’ll be really annoyed if that doesn’t take care of it. And I don’t want to spend the big $$ on encapsulation if it’s a scam. As my dad used to say: “the joys of home ownership…”</p>
<p>Sorry to hear about Rocco. I’ve never had cats but we bought our first old 1920’s house almost 30 years ago from people who had 3 cats. Soon after we moved in , we noticed a smell that got worse when it rained. We drove ourselves crazy with it-pulled up their old rugs, cleaned the hardwood floors thinking the odor was in the floors,etc. Took a while to figure it out but when we turned on the AC (which we hadn’t needed initially), we realized the cats (or at least one of them) had been urinating and defecating in the registers. Gross but there was tons of smell coming out of the ductwork which had to be professionally removed. The sellers had put kitty litter and deodorizers into the ducts to mask the smell. The house was immaculate when we looked at it and never would have suspected this problem. Look in your floor ductwork just in case.Good luck with finding the source of the odor. I was very stressed out by the whole thing until we finally got to the bottom of where the smell was coming from!</p>
<p>Thanks all. Sev: the A/C has been running all summer & it hasn’t been an issue so I’m pretty sure that’s not it plus I was face down breathing in the vents for about 5 minutes last night I thought the same thing. My gut feeling is that some moisture seemed up and wet the padding under the carpet, reactivating the cat stain. Now it’s got more of a mildewy smell rather than cat pee. </p>
<p>over30: I was all over GardenWeb last night before I posted. Confused me even more :)</p>
<p>DH has decided that he’s contacting two basement companies to come look at the crawl space this week: one that does encapsulation and one that handles mold. Guess we’ll see what they say.</p>
<p>Well, the cats will stay and as the plot thickens, it’s probably not a cat issue anyway. Seems as if there are a number of buildings in the area dealing with the same type of odor (DH smelled it in his office lobby today) and it seems to be due to the very dry summer followed by a week of 10+ inches of rain. We have 3 contractors coming out to look at our crawl space in the next couple of days. yay.</p>
<p>We are having the same smell issue in our basement since the heavy rain and humidity. We’re airing the place out during the day and running the dehumidifier at night…and going to put out charcoal to absorb the odor…hope it works.</p>
I thought the same thing. My gut feeling is that some moisture seemed up and wet the padding under the carpet, reactivating the cat stain. Now it’s got more of a mildewy smell rather than cat pee. </p>