Shower drain smell that no one can fix!

[MarianneR]

If a builder that I did a job for is having problem with the plumbing you can bet no matter who’s paying me that I’m trying to find the problem.

Does that mean the guy is knowledgeable enough to find it ? No

The op even said that when other people are there he can’t recreate the smell.

Sometimes it hard to find a ghost......

Plus I have an insurance bond that will pay if I cause a problem that must be repaired by others.....then if I was found to be negligent I would be subject to subrogation.

Have any idea what subrogation means ? Look it up. So yes, I have every intention to find my problems if I have one.

If this ever went to court they could sue the plumber and the builder. The plumber does not work under the contractors umbrella.

What are you even talking about? You're actually trying to argue that a developer is somehow motived to spend unlimited amounts of money trying to find every problem someone complains about?

"He Joey, did you check out than complaint from 307".
"Yeah, I did a smoke test but couldn't find anything".

Case Closed.

 

[Twowaxhack]

What are you even talking about? You're actually trying to argue that a developer is somehow motived to spend unlimited amounts of money trying to find every problem someone complains about?

"He Joey, did you check out than complaint from 307".
"Yeah, I did a smoke test but couldn't find anything".

Case Closed.

They are, because they have insurance that will subrogate them.

You don’t know what you’re taking to about.

How long have you been in the plumbing business ?

What they will not do is spend unlimited time trying to find a problem that the owner can not show them.......or let them smell. But they are responsible for all costs associated with finding it.......IF ITS EVER FOUND.

From what the OP has stated, the contractor and the plumber have taken an acceptable course of action.

It just needs to be further investigated and I’m not absolutely convinced it’s a plumbing issue yet. There’s just has not been enough done to rule out one way or another.,”

I specialize in problems JUST LIKE THIS.

 

[MarianneR]

You're really not arguing any point at all.

"There may not be a problem"
"Maybe the guy is incompetent"
"They can get sued for something or other"
"They've done their due diligence"

Frankly, it's like talking to a 6yo.

 

[Twowaxhack]

You're really not arguing any point at all.

"There may not be a problem"
"Maybe the guy is incompetent"
"They can get sued for something or other"
"They've done their due diligence"

Frankly, it's like talking to a 6yo.

This applies to you......
I address problems like the OP for a living., 36 yrs worth of experience.

What experience do you have ? Watching Judge Judy and DIY channel ?

 

[Twowaxhack]

The plumber that’s coming to the OP’s home is most likely a new construction plumber and may not have a repair and problem solving background. It’s his due diligence to come and check as he is doing.....

To cast shade on the contractor or this plumber would be unfair. After all, they’re attempting to find a smell that the OP can’t produce for them.,

We have given solid suggestions on how to find the issue. Hopefully a resolution will be found.,

The plumber most likely has a bond if it comes down to it.

 

[Twowaxhack]

People think "warranty" work is like at a car dealership; the dealership makes money off of warranty work, so they're eager to fix any little thing. That's not the case with builders. They set aside money for repairs, but they want to do as little as possible.

The dealership makes more money off a repair for the individual than working for the manufacture.

So if the dealer is busy, he doesn’t want warranty work.

Fun fact.

Builders/plumbers are obligated by law to correct their mistakes. It’s up to the owner to report problems to the plumbing code officials if the owner believes they have a plumbing condition that’s a violation or a danger to public health.

Isn’t that grand ?

 

[Rafterman]

So to get back on track here...I got an email today that the builder and plumber have closed the warranty case. We're now going to contact the builder and tell them that we are going to hire an independent plumber to investigate the issue since we are still dissatisfied with the work. Since we have on record that there was an issue while the home was still under warranty, we are going to *attempt* to get them to pay for whatever a 3rd party plumber finds is wrong. While I doubt this will happen, at least if we get a 3rd party plumber to investigate and give us a hard answer as to what is wrong, then perhaps we can get the builder to finally pay for repairs.

If the builder refuses to get this issue solved 100%, then we are going to make a HUGE stink (pun intended) about this whole situation on social media. This builder is pretty big in eastern NC as well as SC. Our neighborhood alone still has about 80+ homesites left to be built on, and the builder has other neighborhoods going up in our area as well. They don't want the negative press from failing to take care of one smelly shower. Even local news stations have investigative reporters who will help homeowners get mystery problems like this solved when the builder is being stubborn.

To be continued...

 

[Twowaxhack]

So to get back on track here...I got an email today that the builder and plumber have closed the warranty case. We're now going to contact the builder and tell them that we are going to hire an independent plumber to investigate the issue since we are still dissatisfied with the work. Since we have on record that there was an issue while the home was still under warranty, we are going to *attempt* to get them to pay for whatever a 3rd party plumber finds is wrong. While I doubt this will happen, at least if we get a 3rd party plumber to investigate and give us a hard answer as to what is wrong, then perhaps we can get the builder to finally pay for repairs.

If the builder refuses to get this issue solved 100%, then we are going to make a HUGE stink (pun intended) about this whole situation on social media. This builder is pretty big in eastern NC as well as SC. Our neighborhood alone still has about 80+ homesites left to be built on, and the builder has other neighborhoods going up in our area as well. They don't want the negative press from failing to take care of one smelly shower. Even local news stations have investigative reporters who will help homeowners get mystery problems like this solved when the builder is being stubborn.

To be continued...

Sounds like we’re right on track. Now you’re hiring another plumber and IF your plumber can find a problem with your plumbing you will definitely be made whole.

I highly recommend that you also contact your local plumbing inspector to make him aware of the suspected plumbing problem with your new home.

You can’t really blame them for giving up on a problem that you can’t recreate when they’re standing in your house.
What would the news report ? You have a stink in the shower that no one but the people that live there has smelled and can’t be smelled when others come to check it ? I guess they might be interested.

But I assure you they have insurance that will pay if they’re found to be at fault.

Blasting them on social media may make others aware and hurt their business but it doesn’t help your stinking shower.

Good luck to you.

 

[Twowaxhack]

Remember the stinking Chinese drywall that popped up ?

For all we know there’s a product in your bathroom and it stinks when the humidity in the bath goes up.

May not even be a plumbing issue.

I had a customer that had a bathroom vanity that the cabinet appeared to be crying. Underneath the vanity cabinet where his wife stored all kinds of cleaning chemicals and make up products.,

The interior of the cabinet would get tiny droplets of water all over.......you could dry them and 30 minutes later it was back.

We left the cabinet open for a week before it stopped. They had to put towels all around to catch the water..

The wood absorbed some sort of chemical gas from the atmosphere that it had created and was coming out of the wood and the moisture in the air was condensing on its surface.

It stunk too, like a chemical smell.

That’s what a chemist at LSU told me. Was likely happening.

 

[PerplexedPlumber]

This does not sound like a potable water issue, since you would notice the smell at other fixtures also. Do you have photos of the plumbing from before the slab was poured? The vent plumbing for the shower may not be well-sealed, but it may not be a large enough leak to detect when the weather conditions are "exhaust- favorable". (venturi effect at exhaust) In our area, weather conditions span from windy and dry to still and 98% relative humidity, to sogging ground with rain for days. In an old house with a septic system, when the ground was water-logged and there wasn't much air movement outside, the vent pipe for the bathroom, which was on one roof level, would come into the house through a window above in an attic dormer. (House was poorly sealed.) When the pressure changed and wind stopped moving, even without (or prior to) rain, this also caused odor (sewer gas) to come back into the house. Were the inspections done when weather was sunny, and do odors tend to occur under wet weather conditions?

Another thing about new construction: you never know what you may find inside a pipe.

 

[Twowaxhack]

Personally I would’ve already sealed this shower drain up and steamed that bathroom up some how. See if it stinks.

The humidity of that test might bring this stink out with the drain sealed tight as a cats butt.

Everything stinks worse when you mix water vapor with it.

Every shower I’ve ever had stinking was one of 5 things that actually had something to do with the plumbing.

1) no trap or trap seal loss
2)tile shower that was holding stinky water in the pan below the tiles surface.
3) water leaking into the fiberglass shower itself, the fiberglass had delaminated.
4)Something do with the potable water when the bathrooms humidity would sky rocket during a shower.
5) Water pooling in the hole where the Ptrap was hooked up that wasn’t sealed on the HOUSE side of the trap and the drain connection to the shower leaking into the “ pit “

Number 5 is high on the list. The stink could would also come and go........just like it’s doing.

If it were loss of trap seal I would expect them to smell it while NOT using the shower but not always true. Humidity plays a part when they turn the shower on.

 

[Twowaxhack]

I even had one lady that called and said her shower was stinking. It ended up being the soured towels she had hanging in the bathroom.

When the bathroom would fill with warm water vapor from her shower it would stink like the Devil.

Talk about an awkward moment. She paid me $160 for me to come tell her to wash her towels.

 

[PerplexedPlumber]

Same drywall was in one of the buildings I had constructed, but it was a different odor, more like a pesticide. I think it was found to be the fire retardant used to treat cargo in a ship's hold. But you're on point about the effect on smells when indoor humidity goes up. Also lets mildew grow. There needs to be as much attention to humidity control as there is to temperature control - set for human health, not too high, not too low, and not just localized to a room.

 

[Rafterman]

On Friday, I spoke to a warranty guy from the builder about the issue and how we were blown off by the plumbers both times after a negative smoke test. This is not the warranty guy who came out a couple weeks ago to do all our "one year" fixes. This is a different guy we really like, who was incredibly helpful when we had a major leak in our fridge last year. The water valve in our fridge, which was included with the house, started to leak whenever the ice maker was filling up and slowly dripped water onto, and under our vinyl floor planks for what must have been several weeks. We had to have a base cabinet completely replaced, and had 2/3 of the floor planks in our kitchen replaced, along with some drywall, baseboard and shoe molding.

Anyway, this guy is a solid dude, so I reached out to him directly about our frustration. He's coming out in a couple weeks to try some other options. Our laundry room is on the other side of the shower wall, so he's going to remove the baseboard, then poke a small hole in the drywall and snake a camera in there to look around under the shower and at the pan itself to see if we can find standing water or water damage. If we find something bad, then GOOD, we'll at least have the culprit. If he finds nothing, then I guess it's on to other options.

I don't know about the quality of the p-trap construction, but while the warranty guy is here with his camera, I'll have him look down into the trap and see if anything looks amiss.

As far as plugging the shower and steaming up the bathroom, I doubt that would find anything helpful. My wife and I both take hot showers, and this smell has come and gone since last summer. We've had the smell come up during hot weather, cold weather, high humidity, low humidity, bathroom door open, bathroom door closed, bathroom fan on, bathroom fan off, etc. That's what makes this problem so maddening. There is NO pattern to it whatsoever. In fact, we haven't smelled the odor for 2 or 3 days now, and it may stay gone for a week or two before coming back again. This is the most random and elusive stink ever.

Our bath towels are not making the smell. My wife and I are both neat freaks and our towels are replaced with clean ones like every 3-4 days. We clean the house every week and my wife scrubs the shower and mops the floors herself. We clean no differently now than we did back before the smell began either. Same cleaning chemicals we've used for years. Our master bath is quite large, so not a small confined space like you'd find in an apartment bathroom for example. Harder for things to get really steamed up. The smell is not coming from something in the room. Again, when the smell is present, it ONLY comes from the shower drain itself. Not a towel, not the drywall, not the grout, not the silicone sealant on the shower door. ONLY the drain. Since the trap is wet, then that logically means it's coming from under the pan itself, or somewhere within the walls, and then making its way to the shower drain opening via underneath the pan.

I'll report back in a couple weeks after we've had the camera stuck into the wall. Hopefully will have some good news by then.

 

[Twowaxhack]

On Friday, I spoke to a warranty guy from the builder about the issue and how we were blown off by the plumbers both times after a negative smoke test. This is not the warranty guy who came out a couple weeks ago to do all our "one year" fixes. This is a different guy we really like, who was incredibly helpful when we had a major leak in our fridge last year. The water valve in our fridge, which was included with the house, started to leak whenever the ice maker was filling up and slowly dripped water onto, and under our vinyl floor planks for what must have been several weeks. We had to have a base cabinet completely replaced, and had 2/3 of the floor planks in our kitchen replaced, along with some drywall, baseboard and shoe molding.

Anyway, this guy is a solid dude, so I reached out to him directly about our frustration. He's coming out in a couple weeks to try some other options. Our laundry room is on the other side of the shower wall, so he's going to remove the baseboard, then poke a small hole in the drywall and snake a camera in there to look around under the shower and at the pan itself to see if we can find standing water or water damage. If we find something bad, then GOOD, we'll at least have the culprit. If he finds nothing, then I guess it's on to other options.

I don't know about the quality of the p-trap construction, but while the warranty guy is here with his camera, I'll have him look down into the trap and see if anything looks amiss.

As far as plugging the shower and steaming up the bathroom, I doubt that would find anything helpful. My wife and I both take hot showers, and this smell has come and gone since last summer. We've had the smell come up during hot weather, cold weather, high humidity, low humidity, bathroom door open, bathroom door closed, bathroom fan on, bathroom fan off, etc. That's what makes this problem so maddening. There is NO pattern to it whatsoever. In fact, we haven't smelled the odor for 2 or 3 days now, and it may stay gone for a week or two before coming back again. This is the most random and elusive stink ever.

Our bath towels are not making the smell. My wife and I are both neat freaks and our towels are replaced with clean ones like every 3-4 days. We clean the house every week and my wife scrubs the shower and mops the floors herself. We clean no differently now than we did back before the smell began either. Same cleaning chemicals we've used for years. Our master bath is quite large, so not a small confined space like you'd find in an apartment bathroom for example. Harder for things to get really steamed up. The smell is not coming from something in the room. Again, when the smell is present, it ONLY comes from the shower drain itself. Not a towel, not the drywall, not the grout, not the silicone sealant on the shower door. ONLY the drain. Since the trap is wet, then that logically means it's coming from under the pan itself, or somewhere within the walls, and then making its way to the shower drain opening via underneath the pan.

I'll report back in a couple weeks after we've had the camera stuck into the wall. Hopefully will have some good news by then.

I don’t know what your stink problem is but I wouldn’t call changing a towel every 3-4 days a neat-freak when I use a fresh one every time I shower.

But I was just giving examples where the owner would SWEAR they had a plumbing problem and would be so sure that they paid me $150 an hour to find everything but a plumbing problem.

You can’t say “ the smell is not coming from something in the room “ because you don’t know where the smell is coming from and you can’t recreate it, so don’t be closed minded.

Good luck finding it.

 

[Twowaxhack]

I still haven’t ruled out your potable water system.

It can give off an intermittent stink. If I didn’t find anything above the slab leaking and it passed the peppermint test......I’d bleach your system for 24 hrs and crank the water heater all the way up then run water to every fixture until it reached max temp and I smelled bleach. Then let it sit for 24 hrs.

I might would even bleach the cold lines from the main all the way in.

Because we would be near the end of the road and more invasive actions would need to be done. Like breaking a hole in your slab to have a look.

 

[Twowaxhack]

I wouldn’t do anything until I did a simple peppermint test. It would tell me where to concentrate my efforts for a $20 bottle of oil and 30 minutes time. But then again, that’s why I’m successful.

 

[HWSleuth]

I really believe you have a concern. I’ve helped a couple of local plumbers with similar complaints in the past. Both situations were that no one but the homeowners could smell the odors. Multiple testing at all the locations‘ piping was done. After several months pasted odors mysteriously disappeared to never return.

Remember, you shouldn’t consider legal action until someone other than you and the wife can create the odor when plumber is there. When someone, while at you shower, acknowledges an odor, then you can hold them accountable. I’m not trying to allow the plumber to bail on you, but he can find something you can’t recreate. When and if you identify the odor we would all like to know.

 

[Rafterman]

I don’t know what your stink problem is but I wouldn’t call changing a towel every 3-4 days a neat-freak when I use a fresh one every time I shower.

How many towels do you own in order to facilitate using a new one every single time you shower? Must be in the dozens unless you wash towels every few days. That's just a waste of water and electricity from having to do so much laundry.

You can’t say “ the smell is not coming from something in the room “ because you don’t know where the smell is coming from and you can’t recreate it, so don’t be closed minded.

When me or my wife get down on our hands and knees in the shower and put our nose literally on top of the drain grate and smell the odor stronger than anywhere else, then yeah, I CAN say the smell is not coming from something else in the room. Can we recreate the odor on command? No, we can't. However, I can say with 100% certainty that we have NEVER smelled the odor unless one of us was inside the shower with the water running while bathing. So in essence we can recreate it, just not on demand. If one of us isn't actively showering, the smell has NEVER been present.

I still haven’t ruled out your potable water system. It can give off an intermittent stink. If I didn’t find anything above the slab leaking and it passed the peppermint test......I’d bleach your system for 24 hrs and crank the water heater all the way up then run water to every fixture until it reached max temp and I smelled bleach. Then let it sit for 24 hrs. I might would even bleach the cold lines from the main all the way in.

Because we would be near the end of the road and more invasive actions would need to be done. Like breaking a hole in your slab to have a look.

Well, I'm sure not going to be able to get the builder to bleach the lines for me when the county already bleaches the water on a regular basis. We smell it pretty strongly every few months. I'm also not going to go without using ANY water in the house for 24 hours while bleach sits. Besides, I'm on the same county water line that dozens of my neighbors are all on, and none of them have issues among the ones I've asked. According to our warranty guy, no other residents have complained of similar smell issues either. We'll see what the camera finds inside the wall and under the pan before we contemplate having our foundation cracked open. I'm one of those people who believes there must be a logical explanation for everything, and that the simplest answer is usually the right one. If there was a gun to my head and I HAD to say what the problem was this very instant, I would say it's either water under the pan or inside the walls in the immediate vicinity of the shower. That's where I'm at right now based on literally months of evidence and knowledge of the situation.

I wouldn’t do anything until I did a simple peppermint test. It would tell me where to concentrate my efforts for a $20 bottle of oil and 30 minutes time. But then again, that’s why I’m successful.

You may be "successful", but you're certainly not humble, that's for sure.

I really believe you have a concern. I’ve helped a couple of local plumbers with similar complaints in the past. Both situations were that no one but the homeowners could smell the odors. Multiple testing at all the locations‘ piping was done. After several months past odors mysteriously disappeared to never return.

It would be really something if the smell just magically disappeared on its own. In fact, we've had a couple times where it went away for close to three weeks and we thought it was gone for good, only for it to resurface again. We haven't smelled it for four days now and are wondering again if this may be the time it's finally gone for good.

Remember, you shouldn’t consider legal action until someone other than you and the wife can create the odor when plumber is there. When someone, while at you shower, acknowledges an odor, then you can hold them accountable. I’m not trying to allow the plumber to bail on you, but he can't find something you can’t recreate. When and if you identify the odor we would all like to know.

Like I've said before in this thread, the elusiveness of the smell is the most frustrating thing. I would LOVE for someone other than us to smell it. We are not crazy or imagining things, LOL. You know though, when the plumber was here the most recent time a couple weeks ago, he said to us that even if we were able to recreate the smell for him, he wouldn't be able to take any more action unless a test produced a result that prompted them to do something further. That type of comment definitely sounds like another cop-out to me. "Yeah, I smell the odor, but the smoke test was negative so I'm taking off. Good luck with everything."

 

[Twowaxhack]

Sounds like you know a lot except for how to find the problem.

I have a 2 towels for everyday of the week. I have my priorities and one of them is staying clean.