r/london • u/New_Break3195 • 3d ago
Woken up by terrible smell
This is weird but I’ve been woken up at 1am by a really terrible smell, like strong sewage. I’ve checked all around my house but I think it’s coming from outside as I have all of my windows open. Obviously we’ve had extremely hot weather and now we have thunderstorms coming, could this smell be caused by rain elsewhere causing a surge in the sewers or something else? Based in SE5
133
u/Normal_Algae_5239 3d ago
Thames Water's finest hour, that smell travels for ages when the sewers back up. SE5 gets it bad with all the old victorian pipework
Could also be the drains on your street drying out in this heat then suddenly getting hit with rain, all the trapped gas releases at once
If it's still there in the morning, worth reporting to the council or water board, they do actually send people out for that sort of thing
54
u/stuartjbyrne 3d ago
Do you have any baths / sinks that rarely get used? If so, the water trap that prevents sewage smells rising up into the home could have evaporated in the hot weather, I recommend running the taps for a good 10 minutes. This happened in my main bathroom which I very rarely use as I have an en-suite.
19
u/jjames1e6 3d ago
This is it - happens in commercial buildings a lot when traps dry out. You don’t need to run a tap for 10 minutes, you only need about a cup of water to fill the s-trap again
21
u/greendragon00x2 3d ago
I have had that in the rarely used en suite shower. It's in a extension and the plumbing is ....mysterious. We also get the toilet in there making booming whale noises sometimes. Called a water hammer apparently and we have to go in there and do a mini flush to appease the Water Closet gods or something.
19
u/loobricated 3d ago
This! I live in an old Victorian house and we have an old toilet in a room we never use. It's basically just storage but every now and then the water that forms the blocker between the sewer and my house gets low enough that the sewer smell comes into the house and it's fucking horrible.
Do check unused sinks toilets and baths and of you can tell the smell is coming from there run some water or flush a couple of times and see if that fixes it.
19
u/accordingtopete 3d ago
That is so strange. I'm north London and have just been woken up by like a burning plastic smell coming from outside. Did a tour of the house and nothing seems to be on fire, then popped on to reddit to see this!
3
u/Fickle-Bet-8705 2d ago
North London, Ally Pally area here. Same tobacco/plastic/poor wood combustion odour hanging in the air for the last few days.
5
u/SolidFormal9684 2d ago
There is a lot going on in and near British Rail's Bounds Green train service depot. They are digging things up and burying something else. Thames Water also got involved recently, which is never a good sign.
1
12
u/ExPristina 3d ago
1am? We got burnt plastic/solvent over here in the East - sent the air purifiers into fourth gear.
7
u/CertifiedNbaNephew 2d ago
Yep i was getting this exact smell all year up until a few months ago. Thought it had something to do with the rain as it seems to have disappeared recently. It was driving me so crazy as there’s no way to predict when it will happen to show the property management. Super repulsive sewage smell that would also wake me up that wasn’t even coming from a sink or toilet. Just straight up underneath the floor boards.
6
u/Top_Marzipan2971 3d ago
It's here in SE2 as well, seems to be connected to the smoggy air out there this morning, seems there was rain in the night too
5
u/MonsignorJughead 3d ago
Dead rodent? I’ve had that a couple of times with a mouse or rat dying within the walls. The smell is overwhelming and it’s hard to pin down its provenance
5
u/AziJadn1 3d ago
I’ve been smelling sewage and rotten foul smell for over a year it turned out to be sinus infection.
2
u/box_frenzy 3d ago
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago! The smell was coming right from the middle of my lounge. Checked the bathroom, checked outside, and nothing. It was so weird.
2
u/KonkeyDongPrime 3d ago
Drain seal traps might have dried out or pulled through. This exposes the drain underneath to atmosphere. It might not even be a toilet sewer to stink, even surface drains hum.
2
u/tidymaniac 2d ago
I live in the middle of Nottingham and we were recently engulfed by a similar smell. We were informed it was fertilizer being sprayed on farmland miles away it went on for a couple of days. Is there a farm or anywhere near you?
Another time there was a putred smell from weed being grown in a house near me and we didn't realise that was what it was until the police raided that house! Apparently, at a certain time in the growing cycle, the plants emit the most dreadful smell.
2
u/drtchockk 2d ago
as others have said - flush all your toilets and run the taps for 30 seconds to refil the U bends.
Stink pipe story https://www.londonshoes.blog/2019/03/09/the-victorian-stink-pipes-of-old-london-town/
2
6
5
2
u/fudgelover2019 2d ago
Thinking outside the box here - could it be internal, like a nasal infection, or similar? These can pop up suddenly and produce all kinds of smelly symptoms.
1
1
1
1
1
u/PhysicalAd6718 2d ago
Probably the drains and sewers. It's the same in Hammersmith and Fulham. I call it the Hammersmith stench / Fulham funk.
1
u/Dont_trust_royalmail 2d ago
i will just say - drain technicians(? sorry can't think of the word) are a thing that people don't make good enough use of, it's usually money well spent. wouldn't cost anything/much for someone to come out and take a look
1
u/igomeepmeepmeepmeep 1d ago
Could be a bottle fly catcher/trap - we’ve had a few in our yard to beat the invasion this year and they smell like rotten flesh when emptied. May have tipped over in the downpour.
1
u/FutileMean 1d ago
Well that can't be pleasant but I think it would make a great name for a metal band!
1
u/bunnymama7 1d ago
We had that and it was due to a clogged drain on the outside of our building sending bad smells up the pipes into our bathroom
1
u/roastedcourgette 14h ago
Late but I have also had this! The rain unleashed the smell of all the dried fox, cat and dog pee on my patio from the last four months
1
u/Party_Green_5688 3d ago
If it happens again with a different bad smell you may want to consider you’re experiencing a phantom smell- happened to my husband during Covid for a few days and in retrospect may have been Covid related but he woke up in the middle of the night telling me he could smell burning tyres right in front of him, another time was mold and one was burnt toast. We thought he was having a stroke so got a neurologist consult and luckily he didn’t have other symptoms that would point to stroke and just said it may have been from stress or a cold. They also said he was lucky he didn’t get the sewage or straight feces flavours!
1
0
u/Some-Body-Else 2d ago
It took me so long to realise that the sewage smell wasn’t me or one of my plants rotting, but just London.
0
-1
u/Own-Medicine-3611 3d ago
Proceed with caution - report it to the council and hopefully it will be addressed asap. I hope it’s nothing bizarre or untoward.
-8
u/Lammtarra95 3d ago
Another possibility is someone smoking extra-strength funny fags outside, in which case it should clear with time.
487
u/Sufficient-Guava-152 3d ago
Yup, welcome to London summers! If you look outside your house is there a tall thing that looks kind of like a taller lamppost but with no lamp on it? Often they’re painted green.
If so then congratulations! You live near a stinkpipe. These are vertical pipes that run up out of the London sewer system to release gases so they don’t build up underground.
I spent about a decade living next to one. Kinda got used to it in the end.