I realize this is my second post in two days about smells, but it is totally unrelated, I swear.
I am in the UK, but I have been trying to explain this smell to my wife for days…
The bathroom in the place we are renting short-term has a really weird smell in it. It’s not a good smell, but it’s not a smell that makes me want to run out and never go back in. I would describe it as ‘sort of unpleasant.’ Like absolutely tolerable, but I wouldn’t want to hang around.
It doesn’t smell biological. It doesn’t smell like human or animal or mold. It doesn’t smell like some sort of cleaning or construction chemical either.
The closest I have come to be able to describe it is like the stale breath of a smoker, except without the burnt things part. Like everything else in old cigarette smell but that. Except that’s not really right either.
This place used to contain (I think) a printing press and then was turned into apartments, so maybe it’s something left over from that? I don’t know, but I wish I could explain it!
I just list the mass spectrometer components. Simples.
I think you just answered your own question, by describing a smell I’ve never smelled before.
But I didn’t because it doesn’t actually smell like that. It’s like describing a circle as something that looks like a blob of Silly Putty before you squish it up. Only vaguely similar.
If its only vaguely similar to what you basically described as the breath of a cigarrette smoker, it could be that the bathroom was fairly regularly smoked in for a while, like multiple months or a year, and then the smoking stopped, and either a bit of time passed, a few weeks or months, and/or some kind of chemical was used to try to mask/remove the cigarrete odor baked into the walls.
That would then be ‘like smoker breath, but a bit off’.
A chemical used to mask it sounds like a very good possibility!
Could the smelly smell that smells smelly be a bathroom exhaust fan that needs to be cleaned or possibly replaced?
Possibly. I honestly would not know how to tell.
You would have to get at the bathroom fan and see if it is dirty and smell it up close.
I don’t know how they make them there, but the American ones can be a bit of a bother because they are often made with sharp stamped steel with tabs and slots to hold the fan in.
I think the people we’re renting this from would not want us to do that, but I’d just like an answer.
Fuck around and find out. I bet they would appreciate the place not burning down because the bathroom fan was primed for failure due to lack of maintenance.
The right way to go about it would be to call them and tell them about the smell concern and suspicion that the fan may be at fault. Then they can spend the quid on a tradie coming out for a half hour.
In wine we use terms for things that smell similar or have elements of something.
Printing machines use all sorts of organic chemicals for inks and lubricants. Does it smell like fresh asphalt and citrus? Like tar and rubber mixed with fragrance.
To answer your question, I describe the way smells taste. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy. If you want to be vague, say it smells like wine. Wine smells like anything.
Tar and rubber and asphalt all seem like they could be elements, so yeah, it could very much be that.
For what it’s worth, that’s not so strange. Our sense of smell is inexorably linked to our sense of taste. That’s why you can often taste a smell if it’s strong enough.
Wood lice perhaps, but you’d notice if you have a lot of them around.
jokes on you, i cant smell! but my hearing is obviously that much better
My house has a smell like that. I noticed it on the viewing when the previous occupants were still in, and I assumed that it was “their” smell and that it would go with them. Nope. Part and parcel of the house.
It’s probably coming from under the ground floor floorboards because I’ve never been down there. It would require tearing far too much up in order to get down there.
My other theory is that something has soaked into the floorboards and has mostly but not quite been cleaned out.
Anyway, it hasn’t killed me. I have rampant ADHD, but I’m pretty sure the two things are unrelated.
Does the smell change with temperature or airflow? That might give clues as to whether it’s embedded in materials or something in the air itself.
I stop noticing it after I’m in there long enough, like after a shower, but that may just be length of exposure.
Comment-OP has a great idea there; try ventilating the place with you out of the room, then go in there and try to find the source of the smell. i.e. put your nose up against the wall, the drain, the floor, the vent, etc to see where it’s strongest. I’m guessing either the drain/sink or the walls.
We always leave the door open in the hopes that leaving it open will make it smell less, but it doesn’t seem to actually matter if we ventilate it or not. But I do appreciate the advice, thank you.
If you tend to worry to much, don’t read the wikipedia page on Indoor Air Quality. But maybe have it in mind for your non-temporary housing.
There’s literally nothing I can do about it, so I think I’ll just pretend it’s all fine for the sake of my sanity.
You’ll have to ask a scented candle maker. I think those people are wizards.
