First check your cleaning products. We use just vinegar and water on the hardwoods. I have noticed when it is warm from sun (not furnace) sometimes there is an oder that is difficult to describe. I have tracked it to too much vinegar build up. (housekeeper does it so I am not sure just what their ratio is).
Mice decomposing smell sickening sweet while this is more musky. Also, eventually, a dead animal stops smelling–weeks and months not entire seasons.
I guess getting the pest control guy is your first step. He (I’ve never met a female pest control person!) might have some ideas or, ideally, find the problem on the first go-round.
Any chance you have a wool area rug that retains moisture? For about three summers I had a strange odor, musky v. musty? and couldn’t pin it down. I threw out an old LLBean wool rug last summer and voila!, odor gone.
A pest control person can tell you if the smell is something dead. They know dead smell.
I read this morning about loose vent pipes. Another idea.
We had a recurrent fleeting fishy, musky smell in one room a few years ago. I turned out to be melted plastic (seen by removing outlet cover) from an outlet that had been wired poorly. It turns out that the builder of our home “backstabbed” the wires into the outlet instead of securing them in a better manner. Intermittently, over the years, we had circuits that would go out on us for no apparent reason. This explained the smell and the circuit issues. We had all of the outlets rewired.
@VeryHappy We contracted with a local pest control company. There are very big in my part of NJ and have several trucks which I see all the time. The second visit we got a petite young lady as our technician. Funny thing, she was better than the guy we had the time before (although she needed a step ladder to reach everywhere).
Huh!! Well, I never!!
And on another note, something someone said reminds me that we had a musty (not musky) smell in the dining room of our “new” house (built in 1963 but we moved in in 2012). It turned out there was water damage underneath a window . . and up the entire side of the house. Thankfully insurance covered it, although I have no idea why they agreed to that. Whatever. Smells can come from a lot of different things and it’s always a good idea to get to the bottom of them.
Make sure your drain traps have not dried out. We had a smell in our bedroom that was coming up through the walls from a seldom used drain. It took us awhile to figure out the source.
This might not help you, but our house had an odor in the foyer over the summer months. It took me almost 20 years to figure out it was due to a humid basement. Even though we ran the dehumidifier over the summer, it didn’t correct the problem. We had to start running it in the spring all the way until the late fall.
About 20-25 years ago, we had a musty smell in our house. It was worse when it was damp, and we really just smelled it in one room. After much searching, we discovered a colony of bats living in our attic behind the chimney. The bats were removed, and we thought we’d gotten all the guano out, as the smell went away. Fast forward to 2013, when we had flooding from heavy rain in our area, and water came in around the chimney and into the walls near the chimney. The smell came back, and we discovered guano in the walls. Yuck. Clean up involved workers with respirators. Like mice, bats can enter through very small holes. (Removal of the bats involved a one-way funnel set up on the tiny hole.)
We have this kind of “sweet & sour” smell in our cottage after it’s been closed up between visits (mostly goes away with open windows and fans on). I can’t figure out what it is. My husband says it just smells like an old house (only 40 yrs old) but I don’t agree with him. I was thinking maybe it was bees in the wall or something off the wall like that. It is definitely not an animal smell. Your post has me wondering it it may be a water damage issue or something like that. It is not easy trying to figure this stuff out. I hope you discover what is making your odor!
^I look at a lot of houses and I can often tell a house that was built in the 1970’s by the smell. There is something in the construction materials (at least in this area), maybe in the drywall or something, but it is very distinctive and more noticeable if the house has been closed up for any period of time. I don’t know if that’s your problem or not @3js3ks.
My house was built in 87, we’ve been here 20 years and this is a recent issue, so I don’t think it’s something in the construction itself. Launching the grid search tomorrow!
@sylvan8798 that is interesting! It’s such a weird smell, it makes me want to take the paneling off the walls and see what is lurking under it. Maybe it is the paneling, the place is full of it.
Some of those houses used particle board instead of plywood…and there can be a smell.
Agree about the drain traps. We have a shower that we seldom use. Every spring I smell it and dump a bunch of shampoo and run the shower for a while. That works.
Also had every February for years, what probably were dead mice in an upstairs bedroom wall and downstairs closet wall. We decided that were probably coming from the outside dryer vent. Had pest control cover with a screen (second floor) for years the screens did not work, etc. Finally, just decided to vent the electric dryer indoors and never had another smell.
We recently had a smell in our kitchen. We kept thinking it was water sitting in the dishwasher but it ended up being the air gap was gross and all stuffed with mold.
My H gets an odor several times a year at his office. The building is a cottage style and they think it’s either a wild cat or other wild animal urine around the chimney on the roof.
Several years ago, I started to notice a gamy funky odor in my family room. Like a zoo. Our cat noticed too and started hanging around the fireplace. Just sitting there and staring at it for hours. The flue was closed and everything looked ok from where I stood, but I called a chimney sweep. Turned out that a squirrel built a nest on the top of the chimney and the whole thing slide down and was sitting on top of the closed flue. It contained SEVEN very much alive and nearly grown squirrels - it was quite a scene getting them out through the fireplace door and released outside.
^Omg, @Gourmetmom imagine if you had had a fire in the fireplace just then!
That squirrel story is such a nightmare!!!
Ever since reading this thread I’m now “smelling” things in my house. It’s psychological ; )