smell in bathroom

[man from uncle]

The toilet pan SHOULD connect to the under floor riser with a purpose made adaptor that has a rubber/neoprene collar that seals to the outlet of the pan. I now strongly suspect that a) the rubber is missing or b) the pan is too off centre of the rubber adaptor to locate properly in the adaptor and since you say the silicon that holds the pan in place appears to be missing this will allow the fan to pull the fumes out of the discharge line. Contact the company that did the work and insist that they remove the pan to check with you there to observe.
Maybe this type
or
it will depend on the particular pan you have, are various versions of both these types

Thanks.
I am now convinced that this is the issue and will call the company

[aldav]

Any quality plumber worth his salt should have suspected that this was the problem. It should not have fallen to you to diagnose the fault and effectively have to force them to do something about it. Your experience further entrenches my view on the vagaries of employing a good tradesman.

[apple8]

Usually there is an hole either side of the pan that a plumber with a bore-scope could access to inspect the seal without removing the pan.

[Beardy]

Any quality plumber worth his salt should have suspected that this was the problem. It should not have fallen to you to diagnose the fault and effectively have to force them to do something about it. Your experience further entrenches my view on the vagaries of employing a good tradesman.

The flipside to that of course is most people focus on price so the likes of bathroom renovation companies use cheap trades to compete for work with the consumer Often young inexperienced tradies just starting out on their own work for those sorts of companies
Not making excuses but that is the reality of the situation

[aldav]

The flipside to that of course is most people focus on price so the likes of bathroom renovation companies use cheap trades to compete for work with the consumer Often young inexperienced tradies just starting out on their own work for those sorts of companies
Not making excuses but that is the reality of the situation

And on the other hand I've never met a poor plumber and if a company is employing inexperienced people then they should have an appropriate level of oversight. Re-doing jobs and call backs are expensive and they certainly don't do your reputation any good. It's not that hard to do due diligence these days when choosing a contractor, the problem is more about sorting the wheat from the chaff of the information that's out there.

The real problems arise when faults are not obvious and it's only years down the track that they raise their ugly heads. I know that some people think that a bathroom should be redone every 10 years but these's no excuse for making the choice mandatory because of poor workmanship.

[Fluddman]

Long time since i was an apprentice but I can remember my first lesson. Do it once, do it right!

Good luck getting this fixed.

[man from uncle]

Usually there is an hole either side of the pan that a plumber with a bore-scope could access to inspect the seal without removing the pan.

Yes there appears to be those holes with caps - so hopefully he will have a bore-scope - he didnt have a gas meter!

He was not keen to come out, but when I explained my diagnostics, he is coming tommorrow. will see what he has to say!

[rwbuild]

So did the plumber turn up and what did you find?

[man from uncle]

So did the plumber turn up and what did you find?

Thanks for your advice. And thanks to everyone else who commented. Problem resolved.
The plumber came out and pulled out the toilet and reseated it. Allthough it was impossible to tell if it had not been previousy not seated properly. This has now resolved the problem, and the young plumber has learned somethng, he was saying he had never see this happen before

These forums are great, I am not sure that I could have got a fix I had not had all this assistance with diagnostics.

[Fluddman]

Great outcome! Pleased to hear it got resolved sensibly.

[rob streeper]

I was going to start a new thread on the subject of bathroom odors but I found this and hope it's okay that I post my own experiences.

First incident with unexplained bad smells in the bathroom was a job I was on. At some time in the past a regular fiberglass bathtub had been removed and a tile shower enclosure fitted. The shower enclosure drain and water service was in a wall that served as a partition separating the commode area from the larger bathroom. The owner complained that after use the shower often smelled of sewer. I quickly determined that the shower floor tile was sodden and many of the tiles were loose or detached. After debating price the owner consented to tear out the shower tiles. After I pulled up the floor tiles I noted that the shower drain was connected to the pre-existing bathtub drain via a flexible coupling and a section of 1-1/2" PVC cemented into the shower pan with just the top of the pipe showing through the surface of the concrete. Again price was debated and excavation of the shower pan began. Long story short it turned out that there were TWO p-traps, one near the surface in the region of the shower drain and another below the shower pan that had served the tub. In effect the prior 'plumber' had created a pump that was pulling toilet waste up into the two p-traps with the resulting smell and poor drainage from the shower which explained the perpetually wet tile and thinset/grout failure. I dug everything out, installed a new 2" drain and p-trap.

Second incident was at our house. We went out to visit the kids and we all took a week trip to Ocean City Maryland back in August.

IMG_1674-1 OC storm.jpg

On our return we noted a sewer smell in the house so my first thought was dry traps. Filling them cleared the smell from the kitchen and guest bathrooms and the sink area of the master bath. The commode/shower area however still smelled badly - filling the traps there had little effect. I pulled the commode and the seal was fine. I also vacuumed out and scoped the shower drain and didn't find a problem. Next I went on the roof and snaked the vents, again no problem everything was clear. We cleaned all of the surfaces but the smell persisted but seemed to be getting slowly better. Time went on and my wife told me that the bathroom combination light / vent fan wasn't working. I checked it out and found that one light bulb (it has three) was out so I replaced it assuming that she was complaining of the burnt bulb. A couple of weeks later she again told me that the vent light wasn't working and that it was the fan that was out. I got up there today and found that I couldn't turn the blower so I pulled it down and this is what I found.

IMG_2265 cotton rat in vent fan.jpg

Cotton rats are very common in our area and this one obviously made a bad decision. I also made a liberal application of bait blocks around the attic, can't have the little buggers chewing the wires.

IMG_1871 Longhorn.jpg

Welcome to Texas.

[yvan]

Rob,

Are the cattle grown for the horns or the meat?

[rob streeper]

Rob,

Are the cattle grown for the horns or the meat?

These are decorations. The owners are TEXANS and everything in and about their property screams TEXAS.