My husband and I recently purchased a house with severe cat (and possibly dog and human) urine odor problem. I’ve started a treatment of homemade surfactant followed by industrial strength bacteria spray. So far it has helped, but the problem is so severe that I really won’t know for sure until the old drywall is removed. We have already stripped the floors of old thin carpet and plywood and we’re down to pine subflooring in all rooms except the 2 bathrooms and the kitchen which have tile and will take some time to remove. One upstairs room had nothing but thin carpet over the subflooring so it was the worst. The other rooms only have the urine around the edges and between the cracks where the plywood was butted together. I used a black light to identify the spots as the calcium in the urine shines a particular yellow in the light. It’s bizarre. There are splashes all over the walls too.
So… does anyone have anything to add or suggest? I’m just winging it and hoping that my partial success continues to completion.
Replies
WOW! That smells so bad, it's making my eyes water over here!
I hope you applied a generous "citty odor discount to the purchase price. A friend of mine bought a place like that and he ended up replacing the subfloor before it was all gone.
May I suggest the following;
An incense burning witchdoctor from the feline tribe the lost island of Atlantis.
A sacrificial burnt offering of twenty nine thousand feline wombs at the altar of the Grand Canine on the Equinox
Sprinkle those ashes on the subfloor (after allowing them to cool)
Use a stick of hard butter to rub the ashes in well.
Wait until the butter turns rancid.
Voila! No more kitty smell!
N/A, If, and it's a BIG IF, you can access the old Breaktime stuff there were 2 threads about "Cat Urine" in the last few years. Hundreds of different recipies for solving your problem. I think a search for cat urine is the place to start. Or just wait a few months and you'll have a new batch of suggestions maybe. On the other hand, burning the house to the ground will absolutely positively get rid of that smell. Joe H
Yucko! We got a huge discount on our first house because of the same problem you're having. We tore out all the carpets; when we took them to the dump the guys working at the dump complained about the smell. Sissies.
Our house was on a slab, though, so we didn't have the subfloor problem you have. The only thing I can think of that you haven't already tried, short of replacing the subfloor and sheetrock, is an odor remover like Febreeze. Maybe they sell it in 30 gallon tanks?
"A completed home is a listed home."
I have seven male cats and dogs who have the run of the house and i foster animals for the Humane Society---i don't believe i have to paint that picture for you, do i?
The very best product i've found is called "Resolve" by Reckitt and Colman--you can google it. Get the kind specifically for pet stains and odors in the orange--not red--spray bottle. You'll probably need two for each room at about $5 ea. Don't hold back; make sure the stain is moist. Let dry. Vacuum.
Bonus: train a fan on a wide, shallow pan of Febreze fabric freshener and blow it around the closed rooms until you've used up a quart or so. It does a great job on the more porous surfaces.
Splinty,
You're from Atlantis, aren't you?Excellence is its own reward!
Sounds rough.
I have had luck using plain old chlorine bleach to remove urine odors. I mixed common household bleach with about 3 part water and sprayed the offending spots. While I usually use a straight bleach and water mix a mild non-alkaline detergent added to this solution will aid in allowing the solution to soak into wood or other porus materials. Use only a little of the detergent because in most cases the bleach solution can be allowed to dry without rinsing but too much detergent may cause an additional rinse step to be necessary. The bleach attacks the ammonia in the urea and foams liberating chlorine and chloramine gases. These gasses are highly reactive with organic soils and the combination seems to work wonders.
Note: Chlorine and especially chloramine gasses are highly toxic. Chloramine is closely related to the phosgene gas used in WW1 as a weapon. It attacks the eyes and lungs and can cause blindness and death. Ventilate the area before beginning. Spray the effected areas and get out. The gasses will kill plants, animals and you if you are exposed to them in quantity. That said The mix is not hazardous if simple precautions are taken and common sense used. The mix will bleach wood, attack aluminum and may stain or bleach surfaces. Sound like a lot of warning for common bleach but every year a few people die for lack of what should be common sense. (Unfortunate loss of life or culling of the flock? Your call.)
Once you spray the effected areas leave for an hour or so. Check the atmosphere before reentering the space. The urea smell should be greatly reduced after the first aplication but reaplication may be necessary on rough spots. Once the area dries the area should be odor free.
This also works on mold and slime. This mix is a stronger version of a standard biological decontamination solution and will nuetralize infectious agents in animal wastes and sewage spills.
I hope this helps. Be safe and have a little fun.
The other thing I've heard of, but not tried, is vinegar instead of bleach.
-- J.S.
I've had pretty good results with a product called Nature's Miracle which can be found in pet stores. It works with enzymes, so it's safe. Just sprinkle it over the area you've identified with the blacklight, and it should destroy the odors as it dries.
My turn: If you want God's gift to removing urine odors, try this: Call an outfit in Atlanta, GA named Phoenix Research, talk to June. 770-457-2714. Ask for a gallon of their odor killer. Costs about $20. Dilute it something like 3:1 (water:killer) Works w/ enzymes, and kills urine odors DEAD. I mean DEAD, really dead. Absolutely safe unless you drink it or snort it up your schnozz. Has a slight citrus odor when wet; none when dry.
We had 5 Shih Tzus who resisted house breaking. They used every corner in our family room, unless we watched them every minute. We sold the house to a couple w/ a wienie dog. that dog came in he room and ignored it - could not find a spot. What I did was inject the rug w/ a huge hypodermic syringe at every spot I could identify w/ my nose at carpet level. The killer searched out the sources and neutralized them. It can be sprayed on before you clean carpets. Better than the kitchen bag that keeps out the bear! Will work on anything that is porous.
DonDon Reinhard - The GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
Picturing this:
Don Reinhard - The GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
w/ my nose at carpet level.
LOLExcellence is its own reward!
We have (a lot) of cats and do cleaning with an enzyme product. Also, we use one of those ionizer units that plugs in. Keeps the smells at bay.
Ken Hill
Piffin: My wife used to howl when I went on a urine sniffing spree. Better than Sherlock Holmes and his powerful lens! She cannot smell the organic nitrogen except from ammonia. On the other hand, I have great problems smelling low concentrations of petrochemicals. We drive one another bonkers carping about those respective odors. Like an ostrich w/ its head in the sand, my butt is in the air while testing the rug. Better than a pluto cartoon! To me, the ultimate test was the weinie dog coming in and being unable to detect it. Normally a dog goes berserk looking for other dog's spots. This one did not. Did in the yard (Or should I say garden for some of our fair suscribers?).
The only way a pathologist can continue to work is the fact that the nose ceases to be sensitive to odors after a while, like someone else said. Did you know that about 20% of people cannot smell the odor that asparagus causes in urine? It's genetic. Try that for trivia.
DonDon Reinhard - The GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
I really did used to like cats.
I refinished the beautiful vg fir floors in our craftsman style house about 5 or 6 years ago. Two cats, ten year old tabby adolescent, fixed of course, Tigger by name (not by me or SO), and Mittens, a tough old barncat, survived a horse stepping, an auto-amputation of her tail, (this is a fairly common event in the frigid north: small animals crawl up onto nice warm engine blocks on cold nights, sometimes still asleep and too close to fan belt and fan when the key turns in the morning.) Anyway, Mitts, the dowager queen of our home, is 19 this year and is starting to lose track a little. She occasionally pees on the floor and her urine has seeped through and darkened the flooring in great long strips.
Any one have tips on removing the dark stains? Smell doesn't seem to be a big problem.
Thanks in advance.
Alan Jones
I still don't like cats but this has all been very intresting.Excellence is its own reward!
A bit drastic, but less caustic than some of the other options...
Soak everything in apple cider vinegar. Soak the areas that were worst affected by the urine, a second time when it has about dried. Leave it alone for a week. You'll have to live elsewhere. And you'll have vinegar smell around for a while, but it will eventualy go away, and with it will go the uring smell. Permanently.
I made a plywood box for a litter of kittens. By the time I was ready to let them be adopted, this plywood was the stankiest plywood you'll ever know of. the urine had soaked completely through the plywood. I soaked it twice with vinegar. In about a week, the vinegar smell was all but gone, and no more cat urine smell. It got wet from rain off and on after that, and more than a year later, you could still never smell cat urine, even when it was wet.
Tech service
Write your question on the back of a 20 dollar bill and send it to me.
Just a thought, but you might try lemon or orange or tangerine oil on the wood. GF had her house tented using organic (orange) to rid of termites. Made a huge, orange, stink for a week or two. My cat prefers to go outside than use any of the several cat boxes (all clean, w/diff litters) I have.
For any cat folks, supposedly, kitties will avoid citrus-smelling places.
I am just going through the same thing on a farm house I bought recently. The humane society trapped over 40 cats after the previous tenant moved out. A person could not possibly have worse cat urine problems
I too have used an enzymatic product - one called Just Rite. It absolutely positively works- not overnight but over a couple of weeks. At this point I do not even expect to have to remove the oak floors. You can see the difference with your eyes - wood stained dark with urine is left many shades lighter.
Personally I doubt that vinegar or bleach could be a good solution for you. If you speak with Bill (?) the proprietor of Just Rite he will explain why.
The website is helpful regardless of wether you buy the product or not. http://www.justrite.com
I did not find the odor neutralizer product to be money well spent for this problem, but the urine eliminator is great. It is important to remove as much urine as possible via water and sponge before applying the enzyme solution however - it leaves just that much less material remaining for the enzymes to consume.
Goodluck.
I've got a question for all those who report the odor being fixed eventuallyu after a couple weeks.
Is it really gone?
Or is it just that you have grown used to it?
Do you have a friend with a sensitive nose and an honest disposition who can report to you?
Do you smoke cigarrettes? Smokers can't smell a darn thing anyhow.
Not trying to be controversial, but I've been where all these solutions were tryed. Vinegar is good for minor individual spots and enzymes do knock it back, no doubt, but when you come in from a beautiful fresh spring day outdoors and get hit with that smell, no matter how faint, you want to turn around and leave again.
Use double doses and do it twice or three times.Excellence is its own reward!
piffin,
You're right. It takes two or three attempts. We live aboard a sail boat(for 15 years) and will continue to do so until the house is remodeled. After we're in the house for a day working we do get used to the smell. I have to say that the smell is 10 times better than when we started using the enzyme product. I still have to remove the bathroom tiles and floor in the upstairs bathroom, and I think I should remove most if not all of the drywall(rather than try to treat it all with the enzyme). When I first come into the house I hold my breath and run upstairs and take a deep breath to check my progress. Then I put my nose down near still suspicious spots and retreat where neccessary. It's tedious and disgusting but I determined. My sister and her husband paid $20,000. (deducted from what they paid for the house) to have a proffesional cleaning company rid their house. I never smell cat in their house.(my brother-in-law said for 2 years every hot and humid August he could smell a hint of it).
Thanks for your confirmation that more treatments will help.
n/a
You are right - I did have spots where I had to apply it twice. But places where I cleaned really really well, then did a final rinse with vinegar and a touch of detergent to neutralize the acid and then flooded it with the enzymatic cleaner seem really good. You cannot be shy with the cleaner - I left standing puddles, and in really bad spots covered with plastic for a few hours to keep it from drying before it soaked in.
Its funny - you definitely do get de-sensitized a bit. But i had people out two weeks ago - one who had been in originally and two people who had never been in it and they all swore it didnt smell. This from a house which literally, physically made me gag the first time I walked into it.
My project has dragged on for a few months as I go room by room. I found that 3 or so days after applying the enzymes, the smell got worse over several weeks and then disappeared over the course of a few days.
I am curious to see when the floors get sanded whether there is any residual odor left in the wood. i won't get top that for a month or two.
thx
And after you finish with all the rest (I too like the vinegar), Throw a thick coat of baking soda down, close up the rooms, and then get rid of the baking soda. (I also will use baking soda over the top of vinegar and let it fizz--seems to work itself in better. But the clean up is horrible.
BITING MY ANTI-CAT tongue VERY hard to not say anything deragatory about cats and the fact that they stink <so why have them!> But I wont say anything cuz I dont wanna hurt no ones feelings.
I look down my nose at people who dare to look down their nose at people.
Aw, c'mon Pete. Some of the best things in life are messy and smelly....
"A completed home is a listed home."
Try a shellac based primer on any smooth surface. Works pretty well sealing stains and smells. It is alcohol-thinned, so get some methyl hydrate to clean your brushes after (and make sure space is well ventilated). You can get generic "white shellac" in gallon sizes, or Zin (?) has a line of primers.
Close enough for government work
Thanks CGram,
I,too,am using Bill's justrite products and have seen and smelled a remarkable improvement. Because I still have a lot more removal to do I needed some support to keep me moving in the right direction and not give up. When I spoke with Bill he got a little testy with me especially when I told him that I didn't think the odor neutralizer product was helping. It just seemed to make it more difficult for me to identify individual areas of problem. So, I've been using the urine eliminator, alone, with success. I've seen, with the aid of the black light, some real unusual drips and splashes on the walls especially under and around the window sills. I think I'll have to remove all if not most of the drywall to be certain that all source of odor is gone.
So, thanks for validating my progress.
Sincerely,
n/a
I started out in the disaster restoration business, fire & water damage insurance mostly. Every once in a while we would get a pet odor problem and we usually handled it like smoke odor.
First get rid of any absorbant surface you can (carpet, pad, curtains, etc.). Then wash the surface with an odor neutralizer. Then prime the surface with an oil-base sealer like KILZ or a clear urethane possibly for floors. Ionization units help, ventilation helps. Arent those blacklights neat? (Just dont take them in the bathroom after your boys have been in there...)