Smell from toilet

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tampadave

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tampa, florida
The second bathroom in my house has a foul smell coming from the toilet, and if not flushed for 24 hrs, starts to develop a yellowish/brown film in the bowl.

I pulled up the toilet, and replaced the wax ring ( which looked fine and had no dampness around ) but this did nothing. It is used frequently, and one day it just started. Bleaching the tank and bowl helps for about half a day, then the odor starts creeping back.

Not sure what else to do here...i have some basic plumbing skills, but this has beaten me.....the pipes from the house to the city line were just replaced due to tree root damage, we thought that would help also....but nothing. I have been told there may be an issue with a vent pipe???? but i do not know if that could be an issue, or if it would cause this type of problem in the bowl itself.....???

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! The daily routine of bleaching is getting really old !!
 
Since you have ruled out the common problems, try checking the tank. Water in the bowl only comes from the tank. Hard to say what you may find. As far as the vent, if it is blocked or non-existant, the waste water could get air-locked and then return through the piping and into the bowl. Not common though.
 
I have checked the tank, and have replaced the hardware inside ( it was running...bad flap ) and have bleached it to sanitize.

I know there is a vent pipe coming out the roof above, i suppose i might have to get the landlord to go up and check for blockage....just not sure how the ventpipe works...but if its blocked, i will give it a shot.

thanx
 
Hi!

I'm new here and I'm dragging this up because I was searching these forums for someone with a similar problem to mine.

I've been having this exact problem for about a year now and it's making me crazy. The icky smell is disgusting and escapes constantly. The bowl gets unusually dirty and has to be cleaned constantly.. at least 5x more often than the other bowl in my house that gets 3x as much use. For instance, I cleaned the toilet with bowl cleaner and a brush about 5 days ago. It gets used once to twice a day and it already has a major yellow film build up beneath the waterline in the bowl.

We've checked the toilet and can't find a problem. I had a septic company come out and drain the tank, they also drained the pump as it was also full (?). He couldn't seem to answer my problems with the toilet. A plumber was also here working on something with the water heater and I asked him about it and he just suggested running a $300+ camera into the line to see if there was a clog... which makes no sense to me. IT flushes fine, a little slow maybe, but doesn't have a problem getting everything down in one flush.

I cannot bleach it all the time because we're on septic, but bleaching is the only thing that gets rid of it.

OH! And once about a year ago, I was out of town for a couple weeks... I came back and the first time I went to use that toilet, I looked down in it and the film had of course built up pretty thick from sitting unused for weeks... and down the in film was little white worms. Gag. So disgusting. We're pretty clean people, so that just freaked me out. I bleached it to death and killed the worms and they've never come back, but I've also never left it that long since, so... not sure about that. *eta: no one in the family has ever had pinworms or thread worms, but they looked eerily similar to that, except there were tons of them, all squirming around in the filmy buildup.

Any ideas what could be going on here? Thanks!
 
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Check the tank as has been mentioned, do you have black mold around the inside ?? this is actually called iron bacteria and is difficult to get rid of completely but if this is a persistant problem then try lifting the toilet and giving it a spray out with a power washer.... obviously NOT with hot water.

it sounds like Iron bacteria.... but it sounds even more like amonia in pee, it could be in the washout holes in the inside rim. you could fix this by flushing the toilet with some bleach, if on septic, you would have to have a means to capture what you flush, Im thinking kiddee pool or something.

I am A plumber but these are purely Ideas as I am not exactlly sure what you are encountering... likely, if I were called out to a place this would be my advice, but IF i was certain It was the Toilet I would likely think a new toilet would be the easyest method of ensuring the problem didnt return.

now having thought about it.... what is your water source like ? the worms thing sounds interesting, perhaps from drain flys?? It might not be a bad idea to have your drain scoped and or augered, it would also eliminate a possibility and could be considered good maitenance.
 
I have same exact issues mentioned by Tampa Dave, including the worms mentioned by CKHagrn! Tampadave and CkHagen, did you ever figure out what the cause of the issue was?
 

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