Sewage smell in terraced house

Nov 02, 2006 4 Replies

I live in an Edwardian terraced house (pre 1900).



We are having a problem with sewer smells coming into the house. It's particularly bad in the kitchen. We are on the end of a block of four houses with shared drains. There's a pathway at the side of our house where the drains run out into the street.



We've had Thames Water round twice and Dynorod round twice. Between them they have found the drain under the manhole cover in the path to be blocked on occasion. But clearing it there are still sewerage smells in the house later on.



They also CCTV'd from the stack on our property out to the shared drain and also down the shared drain. No problems were found out to the road.



But still the smell persists on an almost biweekly basis. Any ideas what this could be?



I'm on my next phone call to Thames Water today.



Are all traps present and filled with water?

Do you have suspended wooden floors?

There must be a non-water filled passage from sewer to house, either through a hole in the pipework under the floorboards, or a trap that is being regularly sucked dry, or that has not been installed (often under the sink, where a dishwasher might have been erroneously installed after all the traps).

Christian.

The last King Edward that ruled *pre* 1900 died in 1542.

Regrettably, I suspect you mean that it circa 1900 :-)

The trap under the sink is fine. And there is no pipework under the floor in the kitchen as everything goes out of the side wall into the drain.

Strange thing is that you cannot smell the sewage smell when you are outside right by the drain but go inside and it smells.

Thames Water have just call and are going to escalate it up. Probably get another visit to figure out whats going on.

But the stench is really bad sometimes. The kids hate it.

ANDY

You are right I meant circa. 1900

1903 to be precise.

A.

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