Strange odours, noises are often tied to plumbing issues
Readers write to ask mystery whines, dishwater rackets and enigmatic odours
Are you hearing strange noises around the house? Smelling strange odours, too? Chances are you’re less frightened than you are fed up with plumbing issues.
“It’s not uncommon to be hearing odd things in your home at this time of the year,” says Bryan Baeumler. “Obviously, the many materials that make up your house contract in cold weather, so a little creaking and popping is natural and harmless, especially at night.
“Of course, if the noise is something more persistent and raucous, you may have a bigger problem on your hands — possibly something to do with your drainage system. Same goes for foul smells . . . unless an animal died in your ducts trying to escape the cold.”
The host of HGTV’s Leave it to Bryan and Disaster DIY, Baeumler answers Star readers’ queries about whining noises, dishwater rackets and mystery stenches.
Hi, Bryan. I have a whining noise coming from a vent in my living room. This happens even when the furnace is not on. I have a gas furnace and I’m in a condo building. Also, I have lived here for 12 years and I’m hearing loud plumbing noises in both my bathrooms. We have a property management company that has not even answered my emails. I am 81but, unfortunately in this case, my hearing is excellent and the noises are making me very nervous. I hope you can help. Lucile Toth, Toronto Well, Lucile, sorry to hear about the whining. (Are you sure it’s not a grumpy neighbour?) Condos are tough for sound; chances are your building is made of concrete and rebar and sound tends to travel through those solid surfaces very well.
My guess is that the plumbing and HVAC noises have been there over the years, but the longer you live there, the more sensitive you might be getting to them. And I would bet you don’t have your own furnace; that it’s a shared heating system for all the units in the condominium.
One solution is to buy a secondary air filter — one that fits in that vent. Although it won’t completely eliminate noise, it will act as a baffle and absorb a bit of it.
As far as the plumbing noises, do you know if there have been renovations done above or below you? Those pipes run all throughout the building, so if there’s any work being done on them anywhere, that sound can run through the pipes and into your unit.
Another possibility, if there were renovations done near you, is that the pipes weren’t secured properly and now you’re experiencing a water hammer: when a tap is turned on or shut off, the change in pressure can cause that pipe to bang around a little bit.
Hi, Bryan. We bought an expensive Bosch dishwasher when we recently moved into our new home, because it’s supposed to be the quietest. However, it makes horrendous gurgling noises in the draining cycle.
We had no such problems in our previous 20-year-old home. Apparently, we are not alone with this problem and it is caused by the new code for under-sink drain plumbing. Plumbers say nothing can be done. Bosch says it’s a plumbing problem. Can the under-sink drain plumbing be reconfigured to negate the awful noises?
Alan P., Hamilton Interesting one, Alan. Given that it’s a new home, my guess is you have a double sink and both drains connect together, continuing as one pipe. Then the drain for the dishwasher connects to that same pipe, which continues down to a P-trap — a droop in the line that stays full of water to block sewer gases from entering the house. The dishwater ejects waste water into the drain, but the pressure that action creates causes a gurgling noise in the P-trap.
A possible solution for that is to place your P-trap a little farther from the sink to block that noise. There are obviously different things you can do on the angle — depending on where that drain from the dishwasher is installed in the plumbing itself — to reduce water flow noise.
But I wouldn’t think it’s an issue with the dishwasher, because it does its job and pumps that dirty water out and into the drain. It may be worth trying a few other plumbers’ to see if they can adjust things so the waterflow doesn’t cause that gurgling in the P-trap.
Dear Bryan: I live in a sevenyear-old, three-storey townhouse. With the heavy rainfall and wind a few months ago, water made its way into the first floor, damaging a small part of the “popcorn” ceiling. How do I remove the stains on the popcorn ceiling?
Nalini, Toronto Hi, Nalini. The first thing you’ll want to do is find out where that water came from. Obviously, there are air vents on the outside of the house and when we have heavy rain and winds, the water can go in strange directions.
The damaged part of your popcorn ceiling would need to be scraped off and you’d need to try repairing it. There are patching kits at Lowe’s for drywall and popcorn ceilings, but again, it’s pretty hard to make it match the area around it.
If it is just a stain, then the only solution will be to paint the ceiling again. But before you do the repair, you’ll want to make sure it’s not going to leak again.
Hi, Bryan. We have an issue that has us flummoxed. Over the summer when the fan and/or air conditioning runs, we often get a sewage smell in the house. We’ve (1) had our a/c unit serviced; (2) had our ducts cleaned: (3) had a kink in the a/c hose fixed; (4) installed a vent in the furnace room door in case the smell was coming from the floor drain — it isn’t; (5) hired a plumber to diagnose — he couldn’t. We bought the house almost five years ago — a complete Annex re-gut and flip. Second-floor laundry was roughed in, but only for a small washer/dryer and no drain. We hired a contractor to enlarge the space to fit full-size appliances and to add a drain. I suspect that’s causing the problem, although I have really no idea what this problem is or how to fix it. Help!
Alexa S., Toronto OK, Alexa, let’s start at the beginning. The fan in the furnace and the fan in the air conditioning unit are completely different. The fan in the furnace circulates air throughout the house; when the furnace is active, that fan circulates air that has been warmed up by a heat exchanger inside the furnace.
When the a/c unit runs, the fan blows air over the condenser coils outside, pumping coolant through these lines, which then come in the house, go through that exchanger, cooling it down — that’s when they turn into liquid again and get pumped back outside to be turned into a gas.
When that a/c unit is running and there’s coolant going in and out through the heat exchanger, there’s no actual air coming inside from the a/c. So you wouldn’t be getting a smell from the a/c unit itself — I would eliminate it altogether as a possible source.
If the problem started when you put that second floor drain in, that’s got to be the source of it. You said sometimes when you do laundry you generate the smell, but my guess is when you’re doing laundry you’re not always pouring water down the drain — you’re only getting water going down that drain when your load is finished.
My question to you would be whether you’ve got a P-trap in that drain.
It’s possible that when your HVAC system is running and there’s water being poured down that drain, it’s breaking the P-trap or somehow allowing sewer gases into that room, which are then being pulled into an air return. But that’s a hard thing to diagnose.
I would probably call an environmental testing company and have them do an air quality test to see if they can actually locate something. Maybe even have that second floor laundry drain scoped to see if you’ve got a P-trap, as well as a P-trap primer — every time a toilet flushes, it puts a little water into the P-trap to make sure it stays full. That’s a tough (and smelly) one! Bryan Baeumler appears twice a month in New in Homes & Condos. He’s the host of Leave it to Bryan Mondays at 10 p.m. and House of Bryan: In the Sticks, both on HGTV Canada. Send your home repair questions for Bryan to Newhomes@thestar.ca with “Bryan” in the subject line. Contact him at baeumler.ca and on Twitter @Bryan_Baeumler.