I was thinking of using one of these things, see the link below. There is another company that make a similar product. Has anyone used them? Is this a band-aide that will just cover my problem?

You need to find the lack of seal in a drain, trap or leak that is causing the smell.

The man who replaced the septic field last year came by and offered to put a mushroom vent on the clean out that goes from the main sewer pipe, into the septic tank. I said I don't want those odors by my front door.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pop one of those filter vent things on the clean out and see what happens.

"You need to find the lack of seal in a drain, trap or leak that is causing the smell. "

That didn't solve my problem. We are planning to do a smoke test in mid september. It's a really big deal. We have to have people up in the attic and basement. We have to have somone on had ready to cut open sheet rock. (EEEKKK)

If we could figure out the cause before then, we won't have to do it. I was thinking that the exhast fans in the bathrooms might be the problem. If the ducts inside the walls opend up during the renovation, that might provide a place for odors to escape. Somehow, I don't think that's it.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks soo much for your help. I really hate to open up walls at the end of this renovation project.

I had a customer with a mystery smell that was finally detected this way. Turned out it came from two areas: the tub overflow, and the tilework itself in the shower/tub. After a shower, some water was getting behind into the greenboard, and there was apparently some growth in there. And this was on a tiled wall that looked to be in really good shape.

We finally did a smoke test. I’ve wanted to do it sooner, but the plumber didn’t have enough people around at the same time.

Here’s what happened. We did a smoke test. At first, it was clear that the general area where we smelled the odor, was where the smoke was coming out. It was along an 18’ run of wall that went behind a wall of the finished part of the basement. From the unfinished part of the basement there was a small opening so that we could see could see behind the wall. It just was hard to tell exactly where along the wall, the smoke was coming out. We finally located the opening.

About 5 years ago, I move my laundry room upstairs from the first floor, to the bedroom level. The pipe that went down from where the washing machine used to be, was cut and never capped. When we removed some ceiling tile in the basement we could see the pipe going up. It looked like it was going through the floor. There was no way of seeing the top of the pipe. If one stuck a finger up along the pipe, past the point where you could see, you could feel that the pipe was cut off, and completely open on top. Its position was very close to the exit to the septic system. That explains why it would smell after using many different pluming devices.

Lesson learned. If you had any pluming fixtures removed in a remodel, that’s a good first place to look.

Another lesson is that a smoke is not such a simple thing. I found a man in California who does smoke tests all the time. I acually hired him as a consultant, that was a good move. The plumber was doing several things wrong. If I wasn't armed with the information from the california man, I don't think we would have found it. I'll copy and post his information, if he says that I can.

Did you ever get permission to post that information?