Hi all - I am new to the forum - I have a problem in my house which has been there for about 7 months now - I have spent about a thousand pounds now trying to get the problem sorted and am at the end of my tether.
We have a townhouse, and the ground floor has the kitchen, utility room, dining room and bathroom, which has a bath, shower and sink in.
Every now and then, usually twice a day, we have an overpowering smell of sulphur/methane rise up out of the floor. (I have 3 children, so its really not ideal!)
The smell happens 'usually' at around 8 in the morning and between 5-8 in the evening, which suggests its around heavy water usage times (baths/showers etc)
OK, so our first thought was a cracked or blocked pipe - we had a camera put into the drainage system from outside, and they discovered a buried manhole under our dining room - they couldn't go any further into the house because they couldn't control the camera past this manhole - so I excavated the manhole and called them back out again.
Inspecting the manhole, they discovered an old branch line which wasn't used anymore, and saw evidence of rats. They cleaned out this old pipe and cemented it up. They then proceeded to run the camera into the house, and found, low and behold…. another buried manhole!! They found no cracked pipes. They also then jetted the whole system to clean it out.
The smell then went away for about a week, and then returned.
Have checked all traps in the house and are all fine - the smell isn't coming from the traps, more from the floor/manholes/main pipes.
I then went onto thinking it could be a blocked vent pipe - so had a guy come out and put a smoke bomb down there. No smoke appeared in the house and the smoke was correctly drawing toward the vent pipe. The smoke eventually came out of our vent pipe - it did take a while though, but when it came, it came thick and fast.
When seeing the second manhole on the camera - we can see that ALL of our next door neighbours waste comes through into our manholes.
The rats are still there, and we have rentokill coming out next week - but the rentokil man said that the smell of rats is more like urine rather than sulphur/methane and would be more consistent.
My next thought is pressure - although the smoke came out of the vent pipe eventually would a partial blockage mess up the pressure and air flow?
As you can imagine, we are all going mental and the smell makes us feel sick and after six months it maybe time to excavate the second manhole - but this is obviously going to cause a lot more cost and inconvenience.
Its an old house, but renovated about 7 years ago, so everything is boxed in - could there be a broken internal air admittance valve somewhere - or do you usually only have a main vent pipe and thats it?
In total we've had 5 plumbers out, 3 visits from the sewer cleaning guys ad now rentokil….
Please help….. what could it be??? anyone want to buy a house lol?
We have a townhouse, and the ground floor has the kitchen, utility room, dining room and bathroom, which has a bath, shower and sink in.
Every now and then, usually twice a day, we have an overpowering smell of sulphur/methane rise up out of the floor. (I have 3 children, so its really not ideal!)
The smell happens 'usually' at around 8 in the morning and between 5-8 in the evening, which suggests its around heavy water usage times (baths/showers etc)
OK, so our first thought was a cracked or blocked pipe - we had a camera put into the drainage system from outside, and they discovered a buried manhole under our dining room - they couldn't go any further into the house because they couldn't control the camera past this manhole - so I excavated the manhole and called them back out again.
Inspecting the manhole, they discovered an old branch line which wasn't used anymore, and saw evidence of rats. They cleaned out this old pipe and cemented it up. They then proceeded to run the camera into the house, and found, low and behold…. another buried manhole!! They found no cracked pipes. They also then jetted the whole system to clean it out.
The smell then went away for about a week, and then returned.
Have checked all traps in the house and are all fine - the smell isn't coming from the traps, more from the floor/manholes/main pipes.
I then went onto thinking it could be a blocked vent pipe - so had a guy come out and put a smoke bomb down there. No smoke appeared in the house and the smoke was correctly drawing toward the vent pipe. The smoke eventually came out of our vent pipe - it did take a while though, but when it came, it came thick and fast.
When seeing the second manhole on the camera - we can see that ALL of our next door neighbours waste comes through into our manholes.
The rats are still there, and we have rentokill coming out next week - but the rentokil man said that the smell of rats is more like urine rather than sulphur/methane and would be more consistent.
My next thought is pressure - although the smoke came out of the vent pipe eventually would a partial blockage mess up the pressure and air flow?
As you can imagine, we are all going mental and the smell makes us feel sick and after six months it maybe time to excavate the second manhole - but this is obviously going to cause a lot more cost and inconvenience.
Its an old house, but renovated about 7 years ago, so everything is boxed in - could there be a broken internal air admittance valve somewhere - or do you usually only have a main vent pipe and thats it?
In total we've had 5 plumbers out, 3 visits from the sewer cleaning guys ad now rentokil….
Please help….. what could it be??? anyone want to buy a house lol?
