A sewer smell indoors sends people's minds to worst cases — broken pipes, digging up the yard. The truth is friendlier: most of the time it's a $0 fix, and you can work the list yourself in ten minutes.
The usual culprit: a dry P-trap. Every drain in your house has a U-shaped bend that holds a cup of water, and that water is the plug that keeps sewer gas in the pipes where it belongs. A drain that goes unused — the guest bathroom, a floor drain, the laundry sink — evaporates its plug in a few weeks, and the smell walks right in. The fix is running water down that drain for thirty seconds. For drains you rarely use, follow the water with a spoonful of cooking oil; it floats on top and slows the evaporation way down.
The sink that smells even though it's used daily: the overflow hole near the rim collects a film of gunk that gets musty. A bottle brush and hot soapy water down the overflow usually ends it.
A toilet that rocks: the wax ring sealing it to the floor may be compromised, and a bad wax ring leaks sewer gas before it leaks water. If the smell lives near one toilet and that toilet moves when you do, that's the lead — and it's worth fixing promptly, before the floor pays for it.
Smell plus gurgling drains: look up, not down. Your plumbing breathes through a vent stack on the roof, and when leaves or a nest block it, draining water pulls air through the traps instead — slurping sounds, and traps sucked dry from below. That one's a service call, but it's a straightforward one.
The one smell you never wait on: sewer gas smells like, well, sewage. Natural gas smells like rotten eggs, sharp and sulfurous. If what you're smelling is near a gas appliance or you're not sure which it is — leave the house and make the calls from outside, gas company first, then us. Ten minutes of feeling overcautious beats every alternative.
If the free fixes don't clear it in a day, something real is going on — a cracked vent, a failed seal, a drain problem working its way up — and finding it is exactly the kind of visit we price upfront before touching anything: (901) 699-7763.
