They have dug the same bit of pavement up repeatedly over the last 12 months, I have reported the smell twice, but the cannot find a leak from their new pipes. It smells like gas, rather than a sewage leak but they have had the water people out to check and nothing found. They have had the smell analysed and its not their gas....
So what could it be?
Its an 18th and 19th C mining area, might it be gas rising from the old mines? They say mines would be too deep...
We had a problem where we thought there was a gas leak at the last house, turned out to be stink horn mushrooms/toadstools amongst the trees and bushes next door. I suspect it might be a bit late in the year for them to be a problem now.
Richard
it is probably coming out of the old pipes. We had a smell for over year when they replaced our mains.
If the smell persists I'd seriously consider getting a gas detector for your underfloor space. It wouldn't be the first time that a house has been destroyed by a leaky old iron gas main leaking into a house basement.
Tim
I have seen stinkhorns in more months of the year than I have not seen them! Very variable.
I'd never mix up a stinkhorn with mains gas, but there is a certain similarity. When we had a bad gas leak, the smell of the free gas was distinctly different to that coming from the contaminated soil.
Not familiar with any gases from mines, etc., but I don't think they have mercaptan added so possibly don't have much smell.
There is one mushroom that smells very much like the old town gas plants
- Gas Works Mushroom:
Much as I would have liked one, we don't have a basement, but we are
100yds from the smell anyway.We have suffered an intermitant sewage smell in the downstairs toilet for a couple of years. Which I have tried several times to trace, though it smells quite sweet at the moment. The guys called out to check out the sewers today, reported that there was a blocked main three doors upstream of us and I think cleared it. I'm now wondering if the smell might have been due to varying air pressure in the main, downstream of the blockage?
Mercaptan is remarkably smelly - a leak in Rouen last year could be smelt in Berkshire. It occurs naturally in marshes and as a by-product from some marine bacteria. It also found in asparagus pee - a smelly effect from eating asparagus. So, do you have any marshes, sea or avid asparagus eaters in your area?
Well, it could be a kind of marsh gas which is being channelled from some way away. I'm not convinced that everyone knows what is under the ground when they build in any case. Land fill is not a new idea after all. However, most naturally occurring gas has no odour whcih is why its dangerous, so if you can smell it it needs to be looked at just in case its some old pocket of gas leaked there some years ago. Brian
In message , Harry Bloomfield writes
I have posted this before...
Sewage pong in downstairs toilet. Worst in wet weather. Eventually traced to a minor leak where builders had failed to fully seal a fresh connection to an existing inspection pit.
A downstream blockage (half brick in the pipe from the same builders I suspect) would leak raw sewage into the pea gravel surrounding the new pipe. A high water table would carry the pong back along the pipe trench and under the house.
A proper leak test by building control would have spotted this!
>The scariest gas leak we ever had was at the previous house when we could s mell gas coming out of an electrical socket in the space below the stairs. Turned out there was a gas pipe left buried in the wall which went to the o riginal kitchen. The previous owner installed the socket with the back box pressed against the pipe, a joint further along failed due to reaction with the plaster the gas worked itself along the pipe and came out the way it c ould!
Richard
Reminds me of rewiring my first Victorian house, how I discovered that the small diameter lead gas-lighting pipes were all still "live". A significant part of the wiring was surface mount, single conductors with cotton/rubber insulation run in wooden double channels.
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