A mouse in the house!?

[tibdoml]

I think we have a dead mouse in our walls ... help!!! What do we do???

We think it's either our washer/dryer and running water pipes make a horrible fishy smell in the laundry room. (It's not the water or washer, we checked that first thing!)

[Naturalyst]

Originally Posted by tibdoml

We think it's either our washer/dryer and running water pipes make a horrible fishy smell in the laundry room. (It's not the water or washer, we checked that first thing!)

More likely, you have a problem with the water trap from your washing machine. There is a bend in the pipes, along the route from your washing machine's discharge hose to outside your house. It is intended that some water will always be trapped in that bend, acting as a barrier against sewer smells coming back into the house. There could be a leak, a clog, or - if you haven't used the machine for awhile - the water in the trap might have dried up. When this happens, you get the smell of "sewer" backing out of the discharge pipe.

The prior owners of our house didn't even install a trap for the washing machine discharge. We didn't realize this at first because it was winter when we moved-in and the laundry room was barely heated. But, when spring rolled around -

Here's a link that talks about this, in general terms: MLive.com: Home Improvement

[tibdoml]

Thanks, I had heard about that before, but was not sure how to figure out if that was the real problem or not.

Unfortunately, we have a REAL mouse in our house now - heard it sqeaking in the kitchen last night while we were in the living room.

DS moved out the dishwasher and sprayed vinegar to get rid of the mouse smell back there, then threw in a mothball to try and deter it from making the back of our cabinets its new home.

But PEW! the kitchen stinks.