musty smell

[sarah j]

Hi can anyone shed any light on this problem for me ? We have a strong musty smell coming from the ground floor of our property we hve lifted some boards and all seems dry, its a very earthy smell and is definatley coming from the floor !

Any offers :shock:

Thanks
Sarah

 

[shelli]

Are you on Loam?

I bet they'll need more detail to answer this one

What part of house, what goes into the ground nearby, what type of build, floor etc

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Hi can anyone shed any light on this problem for me ? We have a strong musty smell coming from the ground floor of our property we hve lifted some boards and all seems dry, its a very earthy smell and is definatley coming from the floor !

Any offers :shock:

Thanks
Sarah

Very earthy smell coming from the ground? well, it could be earth :roll:

That said, is it a mushroomy earthy smell (a bit like the bark chippings they put on flowerbeds but sharper, more "acrid")? - it could be Serpula Lachrymans.

I won't use its common name for fear of instilling panic, but it might be "active" and sporing because it's under stress and dying, which is a good thing and not necessarily a cause for panic.

 

[Nemesis]

I did think of that... is this a new smell? Ie just happened?

 

[sarah j]

To be honest the smell has been their for a while, we have looked under the floor boards and there doesn't seem to be anything there growing or other wise and its dry!
The house hadn't been touched for years and we took the carpets up when we moved in about 9 months ago and thats when I started smelling the musty smell.

 

[Nemesis]

We had a strong smell of wet earth but it was the fact we had wet earth! Also we had hessian covered central heating pipes whichj whiffed when the heating went on.

However, if the earth is dry... no idea!

 

[shelli]

could it be something dead there perhaps - birds rodents etc - they smell a bit earthy once little corpses have dessicated -

 

[Lime]

Is the underfloor ventilated with a cross-flow of air?
If it is enclosed with poor ventilation then it doesn't surprise me that a smell exists.

 

[michael]

I have the same problem although its not continuous just comes and goes from time to time a very earthy smell that sometimes hits you when you first walk into the house and then diminishes as your nose gets used to it. I suppose it could also be described as a slightly sweet sickly earthy smell. In my case I have a very old (1880) exposed floorboards with a few gaps (not tongue and grooved) the soil (or soil and dust) is only about 1ft below the boards but all seem pretty dry. I must have had my head under every section of floor in the house with a torch and sniffing away until my nostrils hurt always expecting to find something scary. I must admit when we first moved in three years ago we found a small area of dry rot on the underside of a few joists although this was not brought to our attention with any smells just by sight. We had the entire ground level under floor and parts of an adjacent wall professionally sprayed with gallons of water based chemical and then one year later when I discovered a small reoccurrence we had the entire underfloor sprayed again as the treatment had a 30 year guarantee. I haven’t found anything else in the last year but the smell still comes and goes. The dry rot treatment company advised me that the smell was simply coming from the earth. In my case I live on the side of a very steep hill and although water from the hill is collected in a stone drainage gully on the far side of the small kerbed and tarmac residential road that runs at the back of the house between our property and the hill I still believe that some water must still run under the house. Last week was very rainy. This week has been very dry. The smell was not there last week but has reoccurred this week. It may be that the rain water has taken a week to permeate down through the hill and has now run under our house forcing the smells up through the earth?
Could anything similar be occurring in your property?

 

[alice]

Just a thought...if you have a crawl space under your floorboards that is earth and it gets wet occasionally, could you have a slime mold (the same gunky funk that grows in your sink if you leave some dishes in and go off for the weekend) that blooms and then dies, that could be causing the smell? It wouldn't take much water at all to start a slime mold, it'd grow quickly (in hours) and when it dies it'd certainly smell. If that's the case, maybe a spray bottle with some clorox would do the trick.

alice

 

[Penners]

As Lime has suggested, I think my first plan of action would be to check any and all underfloor ventilation grilles (or bricks) in the outside walls of the house. If they exist but are blocked, then unblock them thoroughly. If they don't exist, then I would install some.

Your underfloor space needs to be well ventilated. But make sure that in wet weather water can't trickle in through the vents (other than the occasional raindrop).