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Sewer Smell in House Langley | Find the Source

Sewer smell in house Langley? Check the dry traps, toilet seals and sinks first, then learn the signs of a vent or sewer line problem. Open 24/7.

DRAIN & SEWER

Plumblink Crew

11/12/20264 min read

Plumber pouring water into a dry basement floor drain to stop a sewer smell in a Langley home

A sewer smell in the house is easy to ignore for a week and impossible to ignore after that. Most of the time the cause is small, and you can find it yourself in about fifteen minutes. The rest of the time, the smell is an early warning about your drains or sewer line that's much cheaper to act on now than later.

Your nose is a surprisingly good plumbing tool. It's just not great at telling you where to look. Here's where to look.

First: is it sewer gas or natural gas?

Both can smell like rotten eggs, so rule out gas before anything else. If the smell is strongest near the furnace, hot water tank, range, fireplace, dryer or gas meter, or you hear a hiss, treat it as gas. Go outside without flipping any switches and call FortisBC at 1-800-663-9911, or 911, from outside. If you can't tell which it is, treat it as gas. Our guide to a gas smell in the house covers what happens next.

Sewer gas tends to hang around a floor drain, a basement bathroom or a tub nobody uses. In large amounts it can irritate your eyes and throat and cause headaches, so open a window, but it isn't explosive the way natural gas is.

Check the drains nobody uses

The most common cause by far is a dry trap. Every drain has a U-shaped bend under it that holds a little water, and that water is the only thing between your house and the sewer. Leave a drain unused for a few weeks and the water evaporates. Then the sewer gas walks right in.

The usual suspects in Langley homes:

The basement floor drain by the furnace or laundry
A guest bathroom shower or tub
A laundry sink
A basement suite that's been empty between tenants

Run water into each one for 30 seconds, and pour a few litres into floor drains. If the smell is gone by tomorrow, you found it. A floor drain that keeps drying out can get a trap seal or trap primer so you don't have to remember it every month.

Check the toilets

If the smell sticks to one bathroom and the traps are full, look at the toilet. It sits on a wax ring that seals it to the drain pipe, and when that seal fails, sewer gas leaks out around the base, sometimes with no water in sight.

Signs it's the seal: the toilet rocks when you sit on it, the caulking at the base is stained, or the floor around it feels soft. Resetting a toilet on a new seal is a quick job, and it's worth doing before a slow leak gets into the subfloor.

Check the sink itself

If the smell lives at one sink and shows up with both hot and cold water, it's coming from the drain, not the water. Hair, soap and food collect in the stopper, the overflow hole and the trap, and they start to rot. Pull and clean the stopper, scrub the overflow and flush the drain with hot water.

If the smell is back within a week or the drain is slow, the buildup is further down and needs proper drain cleaning. Our post on why drains keep clogging explains why it keeps happening.

Only the hot water smells? That's your tank

Run a cold tap, then a hot tap, and smell each one. If only the hot water smells like rotten eggs, at every tap in the house, the sewer has nothing to do with it. Bacteria inside the hot water tank turn sulphates in the water into hydrogen sulphide, and the tank's magnesium anode rod feeds the reaction. It's especially common in rural Langley homes on well water.

The usual fix is a different anode rod and a disinfected tank, which we handle as part of our hot water tank service. If both hot and cold water smell and you're on a well, the problem is in the water itself, and well water treatment built around a lab test is the long-term answer.

When the smell is everywhere

A smell all over the house, or one that gets worse when you flush or run the washer, points past the traps. The usual causes:

A blocked plumbing vent. Your drains vent through the roof. When the vent is blocked by leaves, a nest or ice, draining water can pull the water out of nearby traps, and you'll often hear gurgling.
A cracked drain pipe inside a wall or under the slab.
A sewer line problem between the house and the property line, like roots, a crack or a sagging section that holds waste.
An unsealed sewage ejector basin. If your basement bathroom pumps up to the sewer, the ejector basin lid has to be sealed and vented.

None of these are visible from inside the house, which is what a sewer camera inspection is for. We run a camera down the line and see the actual problem instead of guessing at it. If it turns out to be tree roots or a broken section, the next step is a sewer line repair.

One Langley detail worth knowing: in the Township, the sewer pipe on your property is yours to maintain, along with the inspection chamber near the property line (Bylaw No. 5367). The camera footage shows exactly where along that line the problem sits.

Is it an emergency?

A smell on its own can usually wait for a regular appointment. Call us right away if:

Sewage is coming back up a floor drain, tub or toilet
Several drains are slow or gurgling at the same time
The smell comes with water on the basement floor (here's what to do first)

If anyone in the house feels dizzy or sick, get everyone into fresh air first. We're open 24/7 for the urgent ones.

Still smell it?

If you've topped up the traps, checked the toilets and the smell is still there, it's time for a plumber. We'll find where it's coming from, show you what we found and fix it. Repairs are billed at straightforward rates with no surprise fees, and for planned work you can request a quote.

Call 236-233-9696 or get in touch.