LESLIE: Justin in Missouri is on the line with a bathroom odor. Let me tell you, Justin, I have had this sulfur smell in my bathroom before and we can help. What’s going on?
JUSTIN: I can’t really find the source of the smell. I just smell it sometimes. And it’s not all the time but I’ve noticed sometimes whenever it’s warmer weather outside and it cools off. I know it sounds funny but I get this smell. I can’t find it. There wasn’t a P-trap in the bathtub and I put one under there. I thought maybe that’s where it was coming from and that didn’t do anything. And the house was built in 2007, so it’s just almost 10 years old. I don’t know. It’s clean.
TOM: That’s unusual for a 2007 house to not even have a trap under the tub. It makes me question how the rest of the plumbing was put together. But there’s probably two sources that you should explore.
Number one is just a decay of bio material in the drain. Sometimes you get what’s called “biogas” from all the organic material that gets trapped in the drain and in the threads and the overflow on a bathroom sink. That all gets trapped in there and that can really be quite smelly.
So, a couple of things you can do there is, first of all, close the drain on the sink, fill it up until it starts to overflow. And then put some bleach in the water and let it slowly sort of trickle down the overflow for a while. That will kill any material that’s in the overflow. And then slowly let the water back out into the drain. That will hopefully kill the rest of it.
The other thing is if it turns out that it’s just the hot water, it could be a problem with the water heater. Water heaters have something called a “sacrificial anode.” And that anode, if it’s worn, you can end up having a sulfur smell as a result of that. The anode is designed to stop the water heater from corroding or rusting but if it is deteriorated or worn out, you could also get that sort of rotten-egg sort of sulfur smell.
So I would take a look at the drains first because that’s the easiest thing to do. And see if you can clean them really good with a bleach solution as I’ve described. And if it continues, try to figure out if it’s coming from the water itself. Because if that’s the case, then I think that anode is most likely the culprit, OK?
JUSTIN: OK. Thank you, sir.
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