So I’m going to be thorough here, I’m not sure all the details are relevant, but I want to make sure I don’t leave anything out that may be pertinent.
I live in a 4 unit apt building. (2×2) We live on the bottom (right if you’re looking at the building from the street). In early June I started to notice a smell coming from outside of my office window. This room (the “office”) is in the back of the building, where there is just a concrete back area (If you’re familiar with Los Angeles, you know exactly what I mean) however, outside the window where the smell seemed to be coming from, there was a small patch of grass next to the edge of the property and a fence where the neighbor’s property began.
The smell was that of, well, farts, to be honest. It wasn’t exactly sewage, and it wasn’t death/rot, it was kinda fart-y. Over the next month it got stronger and with it getting stronger it definitely felt lead me to believe that maybe it was rotting grass.
As I started to inspect the patch I noticed that my upstairs neighbor’s AC unit was right above the patch dripping condensation onto the grass. So I thought perhaps the grass was getting wet, rotting and causing the smell. So I put a bucket to catch the water. Didn’t help. So I tore up all the grass. Didn’t help.
So I call our plumber. He comes out, confirms the smell but can’t find anything. Checks the crawl space, all dry. No water. I didn’t press to hard, because at this point, I feel like the smell is coming from this specific corner of our property and floating in through the window. Also coupled with the fact that the plumber confirmed that there are NO pipes that run back there. All our pipes are in the front of our unit and run into the middle of the building where they meet up with our upstairs neighbors pipes.
Fast fwd that I go out of town, etc, life catches up and I get busy – and for the meantime I just keep that window closed. But I soon start smelling the smell in other places. In the dinning room I have a heating unit (the only heating unit in the place, again – LA.) The smell is coming from there. I think “Oh no, it’s a gas leak.” Call someone from the gas company out and they take readings all over the property. Nothing. Then the smell is coming from our kitchen. A little bit from the sink if you put your face up to it, but mostly when you open the cabinets. (I assume the pipes run behind the wall there and its strongest because cabinets are closed tight spaces until you open them up.)
I hired a house keeper to come and clean out EVERYTHING in the kitchen, thinking that maybe I left food somewhere, or, perhaps something died. Smell is still here. I got drain cleaner and used it for a month religiously. Nothing. Didn’t even put a DENT in the smell. Didn’t even seem to do the “make it better, then it came back” sort of thing.
So, is it a bacteria that started in the grass then infected my plumbing? Is the originally grassy smell un-related? The only things I feel like could be useful is:
1.) I’ve lived here 7 years and this is the first summer this has ever happened. It started in June so I feel like anything that “died” would have been decomposed by now.
2.) The upstairs neighbor’s plumbing is connected to mine. One time, I my noticed my bathtub was slowly filling up with water randomly when my water wasn’t on. I called my upstairs neighbor and low and behold the wife was taking a shower. When she shut her shower off the water stopped filling into my bathtub. So, the plumbing is connected. (That turned out to be a clog and the water was backing up into my tub)
3.) The upstairs neighbors are new – this is the first summer they’ve been here, and they just had a new baby. I mean, it feels ludicrous and I’m grasping at straws but, could they be putting something down the drain that would cause this?
I’m at a loss. I’m having the plumber come back this week for another try to see what we can figure out. Any suggestions on things to have him check out would be appreciated.
TLDR:
There is a smell in my apt that has been here since June, it seems to also be moving, and I cannot figure out what is causing it.
