Help Eliminating an Odor. . .

I would say that something has died and crawled under the cabinetry. This is going to be a "B" to get out! My husband says you can try taking the cabinet out, or removing the cabinet floor. Eventually, it will rot, and the smell will go away. I don't know if you used a very strong deodorant, if you could mask the smell till it rots.

What about a leak behind the wall where you can see it or under the cabinet where you can't see it. THat is the only explanation that I can think of.
What about a dead mouse under the cabinet or behind the wall behind the sink?

I surely think you need to have a plumber come in..
If you have a septic tank, look in the yellow pages under septic tank service....
or call a regular plumber or Town of Cary (or whatever county)water, utilites ....Sometimes the town pressurizes the sewer lines to make sure there is no gas leaks in the pipes or structural building... Don't give up...You want to make sure there are no gas leaks...
and sometimes animals die in the walls near where the pipes go to the outside...good luck

Are you sure it is the drain? Maybe something crawled under the cabinet and died. That sounds gross but it could be a mouse or something.

Hi, my husband remodeled our kitchen a year and a half ago. There is a smell under my sink now that is apparently from the glue used to fit the pipes and install the continuous hot water supply. I really don't expect that it is ever going to go away. I only smell it when I reach in to get something. Is it possible that you could be dealing with the same issue? - P.

As you have already heard, the most likely culprit is a dead animal. The smell of a dead mouse/rat/possum/squirrel etc. can linger for positively AGES! As the corpse decays, the fats break down and give off a ureic odor. The chemicals that create this nasty smell are absorbed into the timbers of the house so that, even after the animal is long dessicated, the 'memory' lives on. Your best bet is to contact an exterminator and have them check it out. There are some wax/paste/gel products designed to absorb these hard to eliminate odors (like eau de dead mouse). I would check online to see if you can find one such product at a store (probably hardware or lumber) in your area. After you eliminate the cause, you can have the absorbant placed in the location to more quickly rid the house of the smell.

Good luck.

hey M. you should try this product from a wellness company it works great. It gets all stinks out plus whites clothes and gets rid of stains. (like perment red marker out of my tan recliner) http://www.themomteam.com/L. check it out.

I use a natural product called
"Fresh Wave" which I find works well. It comes in a gel and you can find it online. It is safe for kids and pets.

Have you had any leaks there, might be mold/mildew.

It could be a dead mouse under the sink. They give off an awful odor. You may want to call a pest control biz and ask them to come verify, they'd know by the smell.

Hope you find it quickly, that is not fun.

Hi M., you may want to try Sol-u-Mel whether you find and remove a dead animal or not. This prodct is more natural and safer than most store brands and works wonders on odors. We use it to get rid of the dog smell in our rug and in our diaper pale. My son comes along and smells our diaper pale after I sprayed it and says that it smells good! I also use it in the wash with the diapers. You can view my website if your interested in yhis and other more natural and safer products. http://www.switchingstores.com/danipen

Good luck, D.

what does it smell LIke? something could have died under there in which case you would need to hire someone to get it.

However, I had a problem similar where every time I passed my kitchen sink it would smell like bad breath. it was the most bizzar thing. Also, when I went into our basement, it smelled worse so i knew it had something to do with the pipes.

I don't know if you have a basement or not, but my neighbor explained to me that since we have a full bathroom in the basement but never use the tub, water sits in the Ubend and festers. and since all the pipes on that side are connected, I would get a whiff of it upstairs sometimes. So if you have any sinks or tubs that you don't use very much, fil them up and drain them and run the water in them every so often.

Hope you find it!

if it isn't dead animal odor - it could be that the pipes aren't properly vented thru the roof. we have a friend that bought an old house and one of the bathrooms (not the recent addition) never had the vent pipe put out thru the roof. so all of the bathroom odors would eek out into the attic and eventually dissipate thru the attic vents to the outside. but occasionally, this sewage smell would come out of her sinks for days at a time, nothing helped. when they discovered the problem, they had a plumber come and run the vent out of the roof, but depending on the roof and the plumber, that can be pricey. if that is your problem, it usually only happens once every few months, so you could probably put up with that... :)

good luck!

If this is the cabinet that a pipe runs through, I would consider the possibility that a small critter has come up from below and died under there!

I'm thinking about the persistent odor we had in our kitchen when a mouse died and it must have been somewhere inside the walls as we never could find it, but it smelled pretty bad. Another thought might be the garbage disposal (if you have one). Sometimes they get pretty bad and need to be replaced. You may also have a leak underneath the house somewhere and the moldy smell is coming up through the floor of the kitchen cabinet. Good luck with this mystery. I would get a professional in there. If it's mold, you want to find it and get rid of it.

hi nMaddy,
Sounds to me like you very well may have a dead mouse under you sink boards, if so they will have to be torn up & replaced, we had that happen to us once & like you tried it all then torn up the boards & sure enough 2 dead mice,
Hope this helps though it isn't what any of want to hear, m(lol)
M. C

I once had a terrible smell coming out of my kitchen/sink area that smelled like sewage. It ended up coming from the garbage disposal. I had tried numerous things like you mentioned as well. If you do have a garbage disposal, try filling it up with ice cubes, pour a cup of vinegar over the top, run the cold water and turn on the garbage disposal until the ice cubes are ground up. Then you can fill up your sink with about 2-4 inches of water, remove the drain plug and run the garbage disposal to help clear the drain. If you have a rotten food, sewage kind of smell, I would try that to see if it works. It did for me :)

hi there,
you might have a dead mouse or other critter in that area maybe under the house in that general area. problem with this if you can't find it you just have to let it run it's course and eventually the smell will dissapate. you could call in an exterminator type person who deals with this sort of problem and they might be able to better find the dead critter.

hope this helps,
lj~~

is it a deal smell? It could be a dead mouse, squirrel, bird, etc in your walls. You did not mention what it smelled like so you might be able to judge it a bit better with that idea in mind. Was there ever a leak and maybe the wood is rotten?

not much help but hope it gives you some further ideas.

W.

Bless you, M.. And I'm sure you've check to make sure a mouse, or something like that, hasn't died under your cabinet floor? You have probably gotten a lot of helpful responses, but if you haven't gotten the problem fixed, I'm with a company that I'll share with you - we have a lot of products available that can help you with safer (non-toxic) ways toward a healthier environment for you and your family. Try www.healthyplanetandhomes.com
E. B.

You may have a dead animal underneath your house in the location and that is what you are smelling.I sure hope not..eeww..good luck..
S. B

I think you must have a dead animal under the house -

I read your request to my husband. He asks "Does it smell like a dead animal?" He thinks you have a dead mouse or something UNDER the cabinet. That makes sense to me since cabinet floors are higher than the kitchen floor. I hope this helps, although, this would be a pain in the butt for you. Good luck!!

Is it possible that there is/was a leak *under* the cabinet, which has turned the floor moldy and smelly? Try to see if you can find exactly where the smell is coming from -- clean out everything under the cabinet and sniff everywhere -- is it from the corner, floor, pipe? I saw that several people mentioned a dead critter -- if so, the smell will eventually go away; but you should be able to get one area where the smell is stronger. If it's in the plumbing, it should be smelling from the pipe itself (and I would *think* it would smell out of your kitchen drain as bad as under the cabinet). If you can more precisely pinpoint the location of the smell, you may be able to eliminate some of the possibilities.