Bathroom Smells in Life in General

Man the house problems just never stop. Yesterday I got on the roof to investigate a nasty bathroom smell issue we’ve been having in our second bathroom.

So something weird about this house is that every bathroom sink was clogged at some point within the first few weeks. One at a time, it would just stop draining entirely and I’d have to yank the ptrap out and clean it. It’s a disgusting job but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. My guess is the previous owners were probably using draino and not actually clearing it out the right way which is why they worked for a little while. Who knows.

Anyway in the second bathroom I had to do the same thing, but right after I did that, there was this awful disgusting smell in the bathroom. I figured I just stirred something up and it would eventually get better but it never really did. If anything, it got worse. I assumed I spilled some of the disgusting p trap junk somewhere and didn’t clean it up properly. So we do a deep clean and figure we must have gotten it.

Nope, it kept getting even worse. Smelled like a sewer. So finally I do a little bit of googling and find out that it’s possible it’s the other ptrap for the shower drain. So as a test I put my nose close to the sink and didn’t smell anything, but oh my god, I nearly vomited when I did the same for the shower drain. So yeah, that’s the culprit. To test this, I just ran the shower water for a little bit to fill the ptrap back up with water and let the bathroom air out overnight. And eureka, smell is gone.

For those who don’t know, a ptrap is a little curved pipe under a drain that purposefully hangs onto a little bit of your drain water. This acts like a “plug” and prevents nasty smelling sewer gas from creeping back up out of your drain. The ones under your shower and toilet are hidden but you’ve probably seen that little bit of curved pipe under your sink.

Now it had been a while since that shower had been run, but not like a super long time, maybe just a couple of months. So that ptrap shouldn’t have been empty. Turns out that it could be the vent for the drains. I didn’t even know drains were vented so I got to learn something.

It turns out that sinks, toilets, and showers all share a sewer line leading out of the bathroom. When you flush the toilet, the surge of water in the sewer line creates suction on the other drains. That can pull the water out of a ptrap, thus letting nasty sewer gas into the bathroom. So there is a vent (leading to the roof) that equalizes the pressure and prevents this. Interesting! Explains all those skinny PVC pipes sticking out of everyone’s roof… each one is above the drain in the house!

So I got up on the roof, had Jessica flush the toilet so I could feel if there was suction on the vent line. And there was, so it wasn’t clogged. But just in case I went ahead and snaked the line to be super sure there was no clog.

So as of now, I have no clue why the p trap in the tub drain was empty. But at least I know that if it starts to stink, just run the water for a few seconds to replenish it. If it only happens every couple of months, I’m fine with that. But if it happens frequently, I’ll have to call a plumber to sort it out. Because trust me, it was FOUL smelling.

Oh and another fun thing, while I was on the roof I noticed the wood from our chimney stack is completely rotten and needs to be replaced. Great.