Trouble

I am once again plagued by an unknown odor in my home. This is something that has happened off and on for the last year or so. Weather change seems to trigger it. It’s difficult to describe but I can tell you that it does irritate my nasal passages. Rather that sit by and hope that it passes I have really dug in this time but am not finding anything.

I’ve heard periodic noise of feet on the roof but we have tons of squirrels but I figured it might be something else or maybe my roof was breached and something is in the attic. Having a fear of heights and fallen off a ladder I am not keen on going high up but I made it. Into the attic. I stayed on the ladder and used a flashlight to look around. All I saw was darkness and insulation. I did this in the day time so it would be obvious if the roof was breached as I would see the sky or some form of day light. STRIKE 1

My basement is finished with a drop ceiling and I inspected inside of it with a flashlight and looked at multiple tiles. Nothing obvious sticks out and there isn’t any sign of mold (other than what I treated a couple years ago, which I will cover in a bit). STRIKE 2

Perhaps it’s something in the carpet, I gave up cleaning the carpet other than running the vacuum years ago. I found it odd that a change in the weather would cause this but hey I figured nothing ventured nothing gained. I didn’t do the whole house just parts of the living room and my room. I found an old cat toy that had the smell in it & figured maybe this was it but it wasn’t. On the bright side the carpet turned out really well. I had purchased some super pet carpet shampoo and thought that at the very least the smell of the shampoo would mask the odor. Nope. STRIKE 3

I’ve got an ozone generator and have used that. The odor is gone for a short period but comes right back. Even when I treated mold it would wipe out the smell for a couple days before it came back. STRIKE 4

I’ve looked under furniture and around windows for anything obvious. I’ve checked outside of the house and again nothing sticks out. There is some green mold growing in spots on the siding but that is easily wiped out with a pressure washer (on the list of things to do for the weekend). STRIKE 5

Last night I went to Lowe’s to purchase something called Gonzo Rocks which are volcanic rock that claims to absorb all sorts of odors. You have to give it 4 to 8 hours to work. The bin where it was supposed to be was empty but the website said they had it in stock. The stuff was $10 a bag. It’s in a mesh bag, you just remove the plastic covering the bag and then set it out for it to work its magic. I had to go scour for help and it took 30 minutes for the guy to find the stuff with my help. This sounded like it would do the trick. I got 3 bags. 1 for the living room, 1 for my bedroom and 1 for the basement. I put them out and did my best to try to sleep despite the odor. Gator woke me up in the middle of the night and I knew then it didn’t work. STRIKE 6

A couple years ago I got an audio book it was about life & death in the ER and the lady referenced something called Angry Orange and said that it was the only thing that would mask the smell of a dead body (after it was removed). Sometimes in her particular hospital bodies would sit idle for hours before they were taken to the morgue. Remembering that and also doing some searching I found Angry Orange on Amazon. I’ve got 2 small bottles on the way and they will be here on Monday. Of all of the times I hope Amazon delivers early this is certainly one of them.

The odor only appears to bother me. It affects everything from my mood to desire to eat, sleep and my mood. It’s like my house is killing me. Gator appears to be unaffected thus far but she did get sick yesterday a couple times. While in the short term I’d like to remove, I would like to know what the odor is and where its source is. Finding the source is difficult at best but is the best assurance of a positive outcome and being able to put this behind me. Considering I don’t know what the smell is, much less I can’t identify where it’s coming from I at my wit’s end. Add this to the list of reasons why I’d like to move. There is an ammonia like smell to this odor. It is in my living room/kitchen and bedroom, as well as my office in the basement (which is directly below my bedroom). The master bedroom and spare guest room are unaffected. In fairness both of those rooms have the doors closed because they are used for storage more than anything else. I have opened the windows to the house each morning rain or shine and after a couple hours the odor disappears but as soon as I close the windows the odor is back. I should add that I also changed the HVAC air filter, even though I knew that wasn’t the cause, I figured it could hurt.

I had something similar over the winter and thought for sure that something died outside. This was an unfamiliar smell and it would make me want to vomit just smelling it. This time around I am nauseated a bit but overall, I can still eat. I kind of wonder if I am just going insane and fighting with something that doesn’t truly exist except in my mind. What occurred in the winter lasted for 3 weeks to a month and then it was just gone. Presuming it is something that is dead and decaying I know that once that process is over with the smell will be behind me but I would just as soon not wait and would much prefer to solve this mystery.

Around 3 years ago in the summer I got seriously ill, it was close to pneumonia and knocked me on my ass like pneumonia (I had this as a child). I was recovering and then out of no where I got drastically worse. I was out of work for a couple weeks but at home. I started to recover and then one day happened to look down at the back door and saw large objects – they were large moldy mushrooms. I got rid of them and didn’t really investigate like I should have, by the time I did investigate I learned that I had black mold in 2 bays of ban board (also referred to as a rim joist), it was into the carpeting and all a result of a water problem. I had a gutter issue and didn’t really think anything bad would happen but boy was I wrong. I called a guy to fix the gutter and confirmed that resolved the water issue. Then called another guy to work with the mold issue. He wanted a small amount of money and was just a demo guy who was going to leave me with a large hole in my dining room floor and would rip out the infected part of the rim joist. I elected to research the subject and I ripped out a small portion of the subfloor and what mold from the rim joist that I could. The rest I treated with Concrobium mold killer which is an encapsulant that seals the wood and crushes/kills the mold. I then painted over it with mold killing paint. The lingering strong odor is what lead me to purchase an ozone machine and it worked really well. The sad part is that I waited a bit too long and this spread to other bays on the rim joist so the small job turned into a medium job. I also purchased air purifiers to help clean the air. I spent far less money but really only treated part of the problem, being the inside of the wood. The outside of the wood is still moldy and while the water has been cut off so the mold can’t grow it’s still present. I just figured out earlier this week that you have to rip off the siding and pull the entire joist and replace it. If you don’t do that part of the job correctly your home will collapse. Fortunately for me the wood was/is still in decent enough shape. There is a persistent musty smell in the basement and the aforementioned unknown odor is way different.

Another unpleasant thing that happened is that we had two male cats (the strays that lived here part time until we had enough and made them full time residents) that loved to spray. One more than the other, he peed on everything in this house that he could. He was young, full of energy and all of momma’s family hated him. Both of these cats have since passed and I have had to clean the house with the help of a black light and gallons of cat urine remover to get rid of the smell. Cat urine has a very strong ammonia smell to it. It is by far one of the worst household odors in existence.

Later today I plan to make a Target run to buy air fresheners to help cover/mask the smell. If you have any ideas on other things, I can/should try or know who one might call to help with a task like this I’d appreciate any feedback. Meanwhile I hope that I am at the very least successful at masking the odor so that I can maintain what little sanity I have left. I know we all have our problems but mine seem to be so bizarre and difficult to solve. I’m good at fixing other people’s issues but not my own. Here’s hoping whatever it is I am inhaling doesn’t negatively impact me or my gator which is a much stronger concern. I am more worried about the cat than myself, if I know that something is harming her and I can’t fix it that will crush me.

I’ll keep you posted but again would appreciate any help or ideas that you might have.