Shower Drain Odor

Help please. I live on the 2nd floor of a 3 story 36 unit condo. One of my shower drains emits a foul odor. Scrubbing the shower, pouring vinegar down the drain as well as chlorox provides temporary relief. Once the shower is used again or the 2nd time, the odor returns. Any remedies? Thank you.

Dennard,
Did you do all I said to do in this column?

I have the same situation with my shower drain - bad sewer smell. My wife is more sensitive to it, but I can smell the odor if I get close to the actual drain. We followed your suggestions, and we just had the vent system pressurized and no leaks were observed. Did I mention that the house is only 3 years old? Any suggestions on what to do next? So far I haven't found any plumbing service that has the meter to detect the gas and its levels. I am not ready to tear apart my house to chase ghosts. Thanks

Brian,
You didn't say if you removed all of the biofilm.

Yes, The biofilm was removed from the drain. There was a small amount of film from soap, but not enough to be a problem. The pressure test passed, and we had 5 days without smell, then one day with smell. Today - no smell. Cannot figure that out. Is the smoke test more effective at detecting leaks, or is the pressure test good enough? The area that is common is the master bath, shower, and toilet. No smell in either two, but same vent.

Brian,
If you passed a regulation pressure test, a smoke test is no different. The smoke test just tells you where the leak is. You have no leak.

Are the fixtures squeaky clean?

All fixtures are good and clean - wife is a neat freak. To elaborate on the pressure test, the plumbing contractors sealed the system at 4 locations (roof and cleanouts) and added water to the toilets and sinks creating "pressure". The water levels in the toilets did not move. Is this the same as pressurizing the sewer drain system? Otherwise, I have no other ideas that might be causing the odor. The smell is centralized in the actual drain, but with my wife's sense of smell, she notices it in the room.

Brian,
They did the test correctly. This means the source is *surface* bacteria. You need to locate the surface.......

Surface bacteria? The smell still comes and goes. Can a backdraft be created with windy days? No trees and the vent is on the windward side - water in toilets and p-traps move on windy days. Also, the master bath is located under and closest to the actual vent on the roof.

Brian,
No, it is not a backdraft issue.

Dear Tim, I have seen your video on how to remove oil stains from concrete/driveway. Do you have any suggestions on the removal of power steering fluid from the driveway? Some stains are new but most are old. Would pressure washing be the best way for removal?

Mya,
Power-steering fluid is just another oil. You can try a pressure washer, but be careful!

I live on the 27th floor of a 31 story building. The building was built around 1968. I just remodeled my shower and now have a sewer smell coming from my drain. I have had the super in my building look at it from the floor below. He states there is no leak in the trap. I haven't used the bath in a few weeks due to the renovation but I have filled the trap daily. After 24 hours the smell is back. Can there be a blockage that is causing the trap not to fill properly and leak out? Any other suggestions besides the cleaning that you recommend?

My problem sounds a lot like Dennard's above. I have a new house (only 3 months old) and have had an odor coming from a shower since we moved in. It is a tile shower (tile floor and walls). I have water proofed the grout, cleaned the shower with bleach, used drano for any cloggs, and cleaned inside the drain with a long brush down into the trap. We have not used the shower in 2 days and the smell came back even with no use. It does not smell like sulfer so not sure if its sewer gas or not. What can it be?

Jeremey,
It sounds like a disconnected vent pipe.

The source of the problem was actually the water itself smelling. A disconnected vent would probably mean water would be leaking out on the ceiling down stairs (which it wasn't) so I had my builder go into another one of his houses that was still for sale in the same neighborhood. Turns out it had the same odor. I installed a new shower head with a filter and now the smell is gone with clean water now sitting in the trap.

To clean the bio film, what is the best kind of soap to use to clean it. I am having this problem in my bathroom sink.

I have the same problem. Mine is due to biofilm. However, I clean my pipes and its good for about a week. If I use commercial strenght cleaner, the smell is gone about two weeks. But the film and smell return in just a week or so. Is there anything on the market that can stop the growth of the biofilm. I have this problem in all three bathrooms, tubs and sinks. It is annoying having to clean all my pipes every two weeks, and expensive for the eight bottles of chemicals I use. Any suggestions? I thought about replumbing my house, expensive, but will the problem just come back. I have hard water. I thought about putting a softener on it. Would that help? The reason I thought about that, is that I am the second owner of the house, it is 13 years old. The previous owner had soft water and didn't have that problem. The problem didn't surface until we were in it about a year. When we bought it we hooked up to public water, from well water, which was high in sulfur but very soft, it measured a 2 when we had it tested. Now our public water measures a 6. Since the previous owners did not have any problems like this in the first 8 years, will going back to soft water help to retard or eliminate the biofilm growth? Should I replumb my house and then install a softener? Thanks.

dwon stairs shower is used only once or twice a year.
we run how water down the drain but the smell returns shortlyany suggestions???

Hi Tim,
I am a maintenance tech dealing with a Biofilm issue. One floor of my building has it's A.C. condensate lines (aka indirect wast [IW]) piped down to the janatorial closet on the floor below, where it drops into a slop sink. The sink has a 3" drain line with an old cast iron trap. I was getting the smell backing up into the units above, so I trapped the IW line at the discharge. This cut the smell down on the upper floor considerably. However, the lower floor started to smell, so I set to work cleaning out biofilm from the drain.

I got it! the sink smelled 99% better. Then water trickled out of the IW line... It Stank!! later today, I will be trapping the AC units themselves, and tracking down where this water is coming from (as it is heating season, and the ACs are off). But, I will still have the problem in the closet, due to the fact that the IW line itself is full of biofilm. Short of repiping, what can I do to sweeten that line?

Hi, I have a similar problem but can't really describe the odor. It smells dusty or maybe musky and it permeates the bathroom. We just bought this home (it's 3 years old) and know that it had a previous leak in the shower that was fixed. Could this be a mold issue as well? The order is constant and is worse when taking a shower. If it's mold then how can this be corrected in the most cost effective manner? Also, the shower shares a mutual wall with our closet and the other wall with the bathtub.

If the trap for the bathtub drain is allowing sewage gas to escape, should we smell it in the tub drain? We have a sewage smell in the bathroom and the plumber seems to think our trap needs to be replaced. But I don't smell anything in the tub drain, even when I put a paper cup with a hole in the bottom over it. And the tub drains fine.

I have the same problem in a 2nd floor apartment shower. Tenant states that the smell is bad and gets worse as she showers.

Sewer lines have all been cleaned.

Just today, we started to notice a foul odor coming from the drain in our bathtub. I have read several of the articles on your website regarding this issue, but I still have one question. Most of the smells you refer to are sewer smells, sulfur smells, etc. Our smell is a distinct vomit smell. Would that be caused by the same bacteria or another issue?

I have a shower drain in our basement that emits a "urine"-like odor ONLY when the shower has been used. If it is dry, the odor goes away. We have tried many cleaning products, to no avail. Any suggestions? The house is over 35 years old.

I have noticed an odor from my shower I've flushed the drains; a plumber came in a charged $155.00 to replace the wax ring. The odor comes and goes. I'm replacing the shower door ( the house is 14 years old) Now I'm going to try your method. Do I clean biofilm with bleach, hydrogen peroxide what. Also do I find the drain brush in the local "home depot"? My next step is remove the shower and remodel.

Short of tearing out the shower and starting over, I believe I have the solution to the foul rotten egg smell coming from a tile or other shower with shower pan liners. The smell is probably not coming from the drain but the space between the floor of the shower and the shower pan liner. The design of the shower drain has openings that are intended to direct water that seeps through the grout or other cracks of the shower into the shower pan liner down the drain. If the mold or bacteria is in this area, simply poring bleach into the drain to settle in the p-trap will not affect the mold or bacteria.

You need to take off the drain cover and plug up your drain about 4 inches below the surface or just past the openings that allow the water to drain from between the floor of the shower and the shower pan liner. Pour bleach into the plugged up drain until you have a good standing of bleach in the bottom of the shower. You may want to even fill it until the whole bottom of the shower is covered with bleach. This should force the bleach into the cavity between the floor of the shower and the shower pan liner. Let it set all day or until the next shower. I could not get a good seal down my drain so it would slowly drain. You may want to add boiling water before you unplug it and let it all drain out. Do make sure that whatever you put down the drain as a stop that you can get it out. I hope this works for you. I did for me. You may have to repeat on a regular (weekly) basis for a while.

I have read the article. What I noticed is that when it was very cold for several days the urine smell in the shower was gone. As soon as it warmed up again, the odor is again present. We have thoroughly cleaned the drain. Ideas??