Sewer Gas

[deejah]

on the street its bad enough but usually one can walk away

however sometimes i smell it in rooms and apartments

it sometimes helps to cover the drain/vent hole in the bathroom with a plastic bag

any other solutions?

[lazygourmet]

Where are you living?

[katana]

I think the smell comes from not having a U-trap fitted by the plumber to prevent bad smells from the drains coming back into the room.

In a lot of Western countries I think they are fitted as standard.

If it's your own house, getting a plumber to fit one would go a long way to fixing the problem. If it's a hotel, cardboard or a plastic bag makes some difference.

[chickenslegs]

Sometimes showers have shallow traps (ie- not u-bends), or no trap at all, so smells can come up through the drains.

The problem with shallow traps is that the small amount of water in them can evaporate very quickly, so the foul air isn't 'trapped'.

It helps if you use the shower more often, or adding a couple of drops of vegetable oil to the water in the trap will slow down the evaporation.

[mahtin]

It helps if you use the shower more often

[chickenslegs]

It helps if you use the shower more often

Purely unintentional.

[bina]

happens here all the time, especially after major rains. guess we arent a western country when it comes to sewage... its perpetual smell of rotten cabbage in our bathrooms in the winter...

thats also a signal for the sewage people to come and suck out the sewage sludge, although today, even after they were in our area, we still have dead cabbage in the bathroom...

and yes, we do have that u trap also, but no help.

frankly, if u cant solve the problme then treat the symptom: scented candles or those bathroom scent emitters.

bina

israel

[Heng]

Just have your plumbing done right (good luck though if you're a renter), it's hardly high tech.

[dddave]

As others have pointed out, the drains don't have U-traps to block the back-draft of air from the main drain when somebody on the same line flushes a toilet. Most are set into poured cement floors so very hard to change.

When the S.A.R.S. crisis hit in 2003, several hundred people in one Hong Kong apartment building were infected and many of them died. It turned out that they were all infected by bacteria circulated through the building's bathroom drains that had no U-traps.

I keep a sink stopper in my bathroom floor drain and only take it out when taking a shower.