Cannot work out source of damp smell

[Daria_J]

We have a small Victorian ground floor flat which has an awful damp smell throughout the hallway (like wet towels left in a plastic bag). It gets worse with damp weather although it's always in the background. We've had a few damp surveys done (one independent). The flat was rented for 7 years and when we received the keys back there was a little mould in various corners of rooms that needed removing but nothing major.
A few areas were found to have possible rising damp but not near the hallway (the walls are at the back of the flat). Weirdly, those areas don't have any smell.

We have been under the floorboards into the (deep) basement and removed some old builders rubbish which did smell tbh, we've used a dehumidifier, increased the heating which was possibly not kept to min heat, we open all windows every few days to thoroughly ventilate, removed hall carpet and underlay (poor condition), but nothing seems to be helping.

We were told during one survey because the flat is near a river, the high water table would ensure constant humidity and little we would be able to do but ventilate. Air bricks are pretty good - we are going to add another but I understand there are enough.

What I can't work out is why it's just the hallway, I can't see any leaks under subfloor and the two rooms adjoining the hallway smell perfectly fine.

Any advice would be great.

 

[Toby Newell]

I was tempted to say have you checked your socks.

But thought better of it.

You have two issues, 1. Reduce humidity / rising damp and 2. Reduce smell.

1. Is a longer term issue for which there may be many remedies.

2. It may be possible to reduce pervasive smells by the use of a powerful UVC treatment and / or an Ozone generator, both work by breaking down odour molecules (as well as effectively killing most molds, pests and insects)

The treatments are probably not that cheap and best left to a professional, they may need to leave the equipment running for a number of days for which time you would have to vacate the premises.

They can be surprisingly effective, they are mostly used by specialist fire and flood damage companies. Might be worth investigating.

Even if you ameliorate the source of damp the smell may persist for years.

Evolutionarily speaking humans (and many other animals) are especially sensitive to odour molecules associated with death, burning, rotting or other decay, for obvious reasons. The fungi metabolites (moldy smell) can last for years even after the damp subsides.