For several years now I have been intermittently experiencing a foul humidity smell in one side of my house. The smell is in an area that includes the dining room, a half bathroom, and the front entrance of the house. It is definitely a humidity smell, like when you leave your wet clothes in the washer for days.
I live in Florida, it's a one story house, no basement, with a very small attic. The smell is only at night. It can happen with the AC running or when it is off. I have had the AC unit disassembled and cleaned, the coil too. I had a mold inspection and a water leak inspection. No one has found anything abnormal. Any ideas? I have stopped inviting people to my home because I never know when the smell will start.
Thanks.
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the smell being only at night and your having already inspected all the 'usual suspects' makes me wonder if you have nocturnal animals active and nesting at that time? You could install CCTV cameras or otherwise keep an eye out and see if there are critters doing weird stuff at that time.
You may have a leak behind the wall or under the floor.
I had a similar problem in a rental house and it was a big mystery to everyone.
I had a similar problem...live in the NE. Have a half bath that developed a very, very faint smell. Almost like a weak urine smell. After checking every which way but lose, I started feeling the wallpaper. Long story very short, the upstairs bathroom waste pipe was in the wall and it had a minor crack in the cast iron pipe. So the waste would spray through this 2" skinny crack and soak the horsehair plaster and boards. The busy wallpaper covered the watermark until I actually put my hand up and studied the print. I found a very, and I mean very, faint line on the paper. No dampness. So I had the wall ripped out and had the pipe replaced.
On another note, if you have critters making a nest in the walls or other wall meets roof area, clean it out, spray bleach and let dry-several times- to disinfect- then use a combination of baking soda,hydrogen peroxide and vinegar to rid of the odor. Then seal it up. There is an Australian website that is FANTASTIC for odor removal ideas. I used their recommendation for cat urine on a brand new mattress, on a down chair seat, and a velveteen couch and it worked perfectly. The site is: catsofaustralia.com. Good luck.
Thanks everyone for their ideas. The vents have been cleaned. Someone inspected the attic and there are no critters. One thing I forgot to mention is that the smell disappears in summer.
I have had a similar problem in my Florida house. We moved in in May, no smell until October! It comes and goes, but it it localized to the bedroom around the slider. The difficult part is it started around the same time we got a new slider installed (in September). It is a musty ammonia smell. It is especially strong coming from 1 electrical outlet and another switch plate. We had a mold remediation company rip out all the lower drywall, encase the interior of the wall, replace the insulation...but still the smell remains! I'm beginning to think its the electrical wiring that has attracted the old musty smell? I have put duct tape over the outlet and this helps. As you said, it didn't happen in Summer. So weird!
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