My husband and I bought a beautiful 1950s mid century modern brick ranch house in upstate New York a year ago. We love it, but it stinks. It’s a strong musty/earthy smell throughout the whole main floor of the house that clings to everything and it has been driving me CRAZY. Please help!
Some things we’ve done so far:
- We’ve had two mold inspections in addition to our house inspection before we bought the house, one visual and one that included air quality testing, infrared cameras, etc. Neither found evidence of mold or moisture damage.
- We’ve monitored humidity consistently since we moved in. In the spring/summer, humidity upstairs was around 50% and basement was 60-65% so we bought a couple of dehumidifiers and brought it down to 40-50%. Now that it’s colder and we have the heat on the house is less humid but still stinks.
- We had a plumber come and inspect our pipes. He didn’t look in walls or anything but looked under sinks in the bathrooms and kitchen and in our crawl space and said everything looked fine.
- We’ve had multiple roof inspections. Our roof is a flat rubber roof, which the previous owner redid about 3 years ago. We haven’t seen any signs of a roof leak, but we don’t have an attic so it’s hard to tell. One roofer claimed our roof was damaged and needed to be completely redone for $50-60,000. Another roofer took a look and told us it’s in great condition. We do definitively have some drainage issues on the roof but with no visual evidence of leaks or moisture found in our walls I have a hard time believing that’s the problem.
- We had a pest inspection. No evidence of rodents/termites/any other pests that could potentially cause a smell like this.
- We recently redid our HVAC system and had our air ducts cleaned. We needed to do this anyway, but we’d hoped that would do the trick, and it didn’t seem to make any difference.
- We repainted some but not all of the house. We did not use Kilz. Regular one coat paint. Planning to repaint the rest of the house this winter.
Some other notes about the house:
- Part of the basement is crawl space. It isn’t completely encapsulated but has a vapor barrier on the floor. The smell doesn’t seem to originate there. In fact, the basement and crawl space seem to smell better than the main floor of the house.
- The previous owner redid the kitchen and one of the bathrooms in the last 5 years. We still have one original bathroom, but it doesn’t seem to be where the smell is coming from.
- Floors are hard wood and have been redone in the last 10 years.
- Our windows are all original to the house and made of wood. Likely need to be redone in the next few years for efficiency/reducing air leakage. Some of the windows have visible signs of decay, but the smell doesn’t seem to originate there. Exterior doors are also warped and not well sealed.
- We have a sump pump in the basement that seems to run pretty continuously, but the pit is clean and we recently had it looked at.
- Our front loading washer recently started to leak, but this doesn’t seem to be where the smell is coming from. We’re planning to replace it and remove/clean everything around it.
Any ideas of what it might be or other things we might want to look at/try? We want to stay in this house for a long time but I don’t know how much longer I can deal with the smell.
