Hi folks,
I'm having a problem with a smell in my conservatory that I was hoping someone might be able to advise me on.
My house has a conservatory off the back of the building, and is accessed through the gap where there were previously patio doors.
The neighbouring house has the exact same design of conservatory, but it was built a few years before mine. They each have a brick wall which runs along the boundary, but I'm not 100% sure how tightly sealed these walls are (or if there is a gap between them that is obscured by the cement edge which is visible).
About 3 weeks ago, on a very rainy day, I noticed a really bad smell coming up from behind the skirting board on my conservatory wall. I pulled this back a bit and there is a noticeable gap (of about 1cm or so) between the brick wall and the tiled floor. The smell is quite strongly coming up in the air from here.
There are also fitted "up-lights" set in the concrete base of the conservatory, and I unscrewed the face plate of one of these and the smell seems to be coming up there too.
As the smell seemed to be sewage (to my nose anyway), I suspected a drainage problem and got DynoRod around to inspect the drains. They said that they couldn't find any problems with the drains, and there were no blockages. I contacted the previous owner and they said they had never experienced a smell in the house, and that as an FYI, the manhole for the property is not under the conservatory anyway, but is under the decking outside.
My next idea was that the guttering might be blocked and somehow over-flowing into some sort of gap between the brick walls of the two neighbouring conservatories. I cleared this out as best I could (there was a lot of muck up there), but it was difficult to fully clean the guttering which runs along the shared wall of the two conservatories.
That didn't seem to do much either though, as the smell is still there.
The only other thing I can think of is that it is a dead animal under the house, as I think the air vent for that side of the house may have been covered over by the conservatory. I have no way to access this though, so it's just a guess.
Also, the smell doesn't seem to be outside anywhere, but is now slightly apparent in the hallway. I don't know if this is just because it has wafted in there gradually or because it is also coming up from under the floors there.
At this point, I'm out of ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions what might be going on, things to check, or how best to tackle the smell in the mean time? It's got to the point where we just have to leave the windows open permanently and have multiple air fresheners in the room, but this is not ideal obviously.
Cheers,
Chris
I'm having a problem with a smell in my conservatory that I was hoping someone might be able to advise me on.
My house has a conservatory off the back of the building, and is accessed through the gap where there were previously patio doors.
The neighbouring house has the exact same design of conservatory, but it was built a few years before mine. They each have a brick wall which runs along the boundary, but I'm not 100% sure how tightly sealed these walls are (or if there is a gap between them that is obscured by the cement edge which is visible).
About 3 weeks ago, on a very rainy day, I noticed a really bad smell coming up from behind the skirting board on my conservatory wall. I pulled this back a bit and there is a noticeable gap (of about 1cm or so) between the brick wall and the tiled floor. The smell is quite strongly coming up in the air from here.
There are also fitted "up-lights" set in the concrete base of the conservatory, and I unscrewed the face plate of one of these and the smell seems to be coming up there too.
As the smell seemed to be sewage (to my nose anyway), I suspected a drainage problem and got DynoRod around to inspect the drains. They said that they couldn't find any problems with the drains, and there were no blockages. I contacted the previous owner and they said they had never experienced a smell in the house, and that as an FYI, the manhole for the property is not under the conservatory anyway, but is under the decking outside.
My next idea was that the guttering might be blocked and somehow over-flowing into some sort of gap between the brick walls of the two neighbouring conservatories. I cleared this out as best I could (there was a lot of muck up there), but it was difficult to fully clean the guttering which runs along the shared wall of the two conservatories.
That didn't seem to do much either though, as the smell is still there.
The only other thing I can think of is that it is a dead animal under the house, as I think the air vent for that side of the house may have been covered over by the conservatory. I have no way to access this though, so it's just a guess.
Also, the smell doesn't seem to be outside anywhere, but is now slightly apparent in the hallway. I don't know if this is just because it has wafted in there gradually or because it is also coming up from under the floors there.
At this point, I'm out of ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions what might be going on, things to check, or how best to tackle the smell in the mean time? It's got to the point where we just have to leave the windows open permanently and have multiple air fresheners in the room, but this is not ideal obviously.
Cheers,
Chris
