Several years ago when we had my live hot line TV show across Canada, I got a call from a homeowner who had a toilet that functioned perfectly except that every night when he came home from work, the water in the bowl had dropped low enough to let the sewer gas smell into the bathroom. He ha...
Draw air off the floor, not off the ceiling
The basement is different than the rest of the house because the floor is colder, attracting more moisture, and the cold air falls and is trapped on the floor as well. So the first step is to plan for the exhaust fan to draw the air off the floor of th...
I received a question on my radio show from a listener who had a brand new washing machine that gave off a dirty sock smell. He would bleach it out but it kept coming back. So he called the manufacturer and the manufacturer said that was normal if you were using cold water! That's a bit of a shoc...
In this TV segment we walked through a whole series of ways to eliminate different types of odours.
Baking Soda is an old standby that usually works on about anything, either just sitting in it's box absorbing odors, or sprinkled heavily over a problem and then swept up, or made into a paste and...
Putting a sink in an island in the middle of the kitchen presents some plumbing challenges. Generally the venting for a sink goes upward in the wall while the drain water flows downward towards the floor – but in an island, going up is not an option.
To have a large sink that drains properly y...
David writes that he recently installed a double sink but it gurgles and backs up. It is 10 feet away from the plumbing stack and goes through a garbarator. What did he do wrong?
When you attach a large double sink on a long horizontal run, the drain pipe will tend to fill up with water ...
Evert from Brownsburg, Quebec has the problem of a sewer odour in his bathroom but isn't sure where it is coming from and whether or not he needs to change his toilet.
It can in fact be difficult to localize the source of sewage odours and hence which fixture or drain is guilty.
One technique ...
I have had several letters recently about bad smells and even flies coming up out of basement floor drains and sump pump pits. One viewer was quoted hundreds of dollars to break up the entire basement and replace all the sewer lines.
The real problem is usually that the trap under the floor has ...
Karen from Kingston, Ontario writes: "We have a washing machine on the second floor and have noticed the water from previous cycles does not always seem to drain completely away, as evidenced by a smell of grey water when the machine begins it's next cycle. Our upstairs plumbing is well vented wi...
Jon, On the radio last week you gave someone a remedy to get rid of a smoker's odours coming up through the apartment building. Could you please post that for me. Francine.
----
First my opinion -- second hand smoke from cigarettes is already identified as a public health problem, and is ofte...
