Ok .... i've noticed an odd smell of fish in my house!! i know it could be electrical ...but it doesn't seem to be near any electrical sockets etc ...also i turned the power off to see if the smell got a little weaker!! it didn't!! i also know it could be fish!! but i had no fish today, or yesterday .....i did have it the day before though.
I'm pretty sure theres no fish rotting away under anything ...i've checked the obvious and its not a dirty house so i'm pretty sure i'd have found some by now, if thats what it was!!
I also know the smell is attributed to the paranormal ...spirits etc ...and not usually good ones!! any advice etc??
Could be dead critter in ductwork or even the wall.
This post was edited by Wes Forsythe at November 10, 2010 8:30:11 PM EST
There are several every day issues that can cause that smell. One is burning a higher watt bulb in a lower watt socket believe it or or not. I am going to paste in some other information I found regarding this issue. It would appear that several people have experiences this problem and it was not paranormal in these cases
Here is the link for the complete discussion:
http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/advice/t-49917.html
We discoverd the smell in my daughter's room!
It is coming from the cieling light. We were burning a 100W bulb in a max 75W socket and we think it was making the socket smell (must have been plastic getting too hot). Anyway, we left her bedroom light off for 10 days just to be sure....and no more smell.
We are going to replace the sockets and make sure we use only the max light bulb. We found they do sell ceiling light fixtures that allow for 100W so we may replace the whole light.
I hope this helps. We are relieved because the "fishy" smell was driving us crazy!
Another person with the fishy smell problem:
We have finally located the source and origin of this problem. We had the same dynamics going as camarohq, whose note appears above: intermittent musty/fish smell that could be overpowering at times, had no obvious source and could come and go with no established pattern. I finally checked the ceiling light fixture, which rests flush against the ceiling, and discovered we had been burning a 100-watt light bulb in a 75-watt socket. The socket, which is resin-based, rather than porcelain, was overheating. The plastic must contain a chemical or component that gives off that awful smell when hot. I could smell the nasty odor pretty strongly in the little insulation pad that deflects heat in the fixture, but just to further test our theory, we only used the the lamp in that room for two weeks and didn't turn on the overhead light once. The smell has disappeared. Just to be certain, we're having the sockets replaced with porcelain sockets with 60-watt-maximum capacity. It's a pretty cheap repair: new sockets only cost about $3 at Lowe's. We discovered this just in time: we were going insane, sniffing around floorboards, calling inspectors to look in the attic, having Critter Control guys looking for rodent carcasses. Thankfully, it was this simple. Good luck!
This can also cause an issue:
Sounds like all of the problems are in rooms backing to a bathroom. I would go into the attic and check to see how the drains were vented. The vent should go out through the roof. I have found some vents and exhaust fans that just dump into the attic, not good.
Here is the mouse theory:
It seems like you may be dealing with rodent (mouse) nest odors coming from the a nest built in an exterior wall. They can be very smelly caused by excrement accumulating in and around the nest and dead and rotting mice.
The reason the odor comes and goes is probably due to the fact that your houses are sealed up pretty well and I'll bet you all have gas or oil heat or even a gas or oil fired water heater. Most houses do not have an air source for the furnace and water heater so when they turn on the air needed to feed the flame is drawn in from where ever there is a leak into the house. This air will bring in odors like rodent nests in on an intermittent basis (when the furnace or water heater is on).
The hard part will be finding the nest and removing it.
here is how the originator of the question on the web resolved his issue:
Thanks a million to those of you who helped us figure out what was causing the fishy smell in our bedroom (we had 100 watt bulbs in 40 watt sockets -- whoops). Anyhow, we are "over the moon" as we thought we were going to have to gut the room and pay big $'s to have the problem fixed - a million thankyou's to all of you for helping us to figure this out !!
This post was edited by Phil Payette at November 12, 2010 2:54:57 PM EST
Jason, this happened at my house for a few months in my daughters' bedroom. We only recently discovered the problem. It was a light bulb in one of their lamps. A flower lamp that had 3 of those fancy chandelier bulbs. We were so happy to find that! I had no idea what it could have been, and they were driven from their room more than once! Good luck.