Well I'm a complete laymen, know nothing about plumbing whatsoever so excuse my dreadful attempts at trying to explain what is happening.
Ever since we bought our house we've occasionally had bad smells coming, we believe, from our downstairs toilet. The smells have been your typical sewage type smell but also on occasion of white spirits (we've assumed one of our neighbours poured some down the drain). Most of the time this smell isn't there but often is after there has been rain.
Then last weekend the smell has gotten stronger and is almost always there. The drains outside the house are clear so I know there isn't a blockage and it seems that the fault is within the house.
Our downstairs toilet is very small, just wide enough for a toilet and a small corner basin. The layout of of our house is that you have the front door, then very small floor area where we hang coats. Directly in front is a sliding door to the downstairs toilet and to the right is a door into the living room. The toilet itself is side on to the front of the house so the cistern is against the dividing wall to next door.
The soil pipe from the toilet, instead of going towards the front door actually goes right (as you look at it) into a boxed in unit. In there it then joins onto what I believe is a short stack where the soil pipe from the basin also connects to the stack.
Hopefully this picture will make things clearer.
The top of the soil stack simply unscrews and I can see all the way down into the pipe that then goes under the floor and out into the drain and this all looks completely clear, clean and dry.
In doing reading up on this problem smell it sounds like an AAV could be the answer except that I don't have one currently fitted and the top of the soil stack is tightly screwed on so any smells in there seemingly shouldn't get out anyway but also, if that is air tight, how is the toilet still flushing? I did buy an AAV but I can't seem to get it to fit because the stack is too close to the wall for one to fit on, also even if I could get one to sit on top I can't see a way of securing it to the stack.
Any ideas as to where the smell is coming from, what I need to stop it and if an AAV is needed?
Ever since we bought our house we've occasionally had bad smells coming, we believe, from our downstairs toilet. The smells have been your typical sewage type smell but also on occasion of white spirits (we've assumed one of our neighbours poured some down the drain). Most of the time this smell isn't there but often is after there has been rain.
Then last weekend the smell has gotten stronger and is almost always there. The drains outside the house are clear so I know there isn't a blockage and it seems that the fault is within the house.
Our downstairs toilet is very small, just wide enough for a toilet and a small corner basin. The layout of of our house is that you have the front door, then very small floor area where we hang coats. Directly in front is a sliding door to the downstairs toilet and to the right is a door into the living room. The toilet itself is side on to the front of the house so the cistern is against the dividing wall to next door.
The soil pipe from the toilet, instead of going towards the front door actually goes right (as you look at it) into a boxed in unit. In there it then joins onto what I believe is a short stack where the soil pipe from the basin also connects to the stack.
Hopefully this picture will make things clearer.
The top of the soil stack simply unscrews and I can see all the way down into the pipe that then goes under the floor and out into the drain and this all looks completely clear, clean and dry.
In doing reading up on this problem smell it sounds like an AAV could be the answer except that I don't have one currently fitted and the top of the soil stack is tightly screwed on so any smells in there seemingly shouldn't get out anyway but also, if that is air tight, how is the toilet still flushing? I did buy an AAV but I can't seem to get it to fit because the stack is too close to the wall for one to fit on, also even if I could get one to sit on top I can't see a way of securing it to the stack.
Any ideas as to where the smell is coming from, what I need to stop it and if an AAV is needed?