Rotten Egg smell in apartment?

I’ve just moved in taipei and my room since day one has had this smell of farts or rotten eggs or something. I just wanted to ask here incase it’s something normal with the pipes, or if I should do something about it. I don’t have any stove or anything in my room just aircon so i don’t understand how it could be gas or anything? Has anyone else experienced this or know any solutions?

Also while you’re reading! Since moving in i’ve had bites down my legs (i don’t believe they’re mosquitos since i’ve been covering my legs). Do you know if it were bedbugs if it would be my landlords responsibility to deal with or mine?

Thanks if you’ve read this far!!

Not normal IMO. Maybe you should try and track down the source of the smell, e.g., whether it’s the drains (could try throwing some bleach or drain cleaner down) or from outside.

I think you should check for bedbugs first and proceed from there. There are probably videos etc. online showing what to look for.

Don’t know the law, but if I’d just moved into a place and found bedbugs, I’d expect the landlord to deal with it.

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Do you have a gas boiler for hot water/shower or anything like that? I had a boiler which made some horrific smells some time ago, I think it was the condenser outlet or something

If you have a bath/shower/sink/toilet or anything of that nature you don’t use that often, be sure to run the water on them every week or so. The water in the U-bend can dry up. This water needs to be there to prevent gases from the sewers into your home. Running the water will refill it, keep it topped up and reasonably fresh.

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Rotten eggs?
Call gas company, ASAP.
That’s the first thing any gas utility in US tells a homeowner to do if a continual smell.

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Cover the kitchen and bathroom drains when not in use and see if the smell goes away. If it does, then it’s the pipes.

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Exactly. Keep windows open in the meantime. Call the landlord/building manager/neighbor association president/lizhang.

And do not light a fire.

It could be your apartment or another unit in the building.

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I’m betting on the drains or sewers tbh. How common is mains gas here anyway? I thought not very. And if it’s bottled gas from an adjacent apartment, I’d be surprised if they’ve been able to smell it over a prolonged period without the neighbors not noticing and without the bottle running out. Maybe they should just sniff around the drains (:nauseated_face:) to rule those things out then ask the neighbors first.

They probably also wouldn’t repair a leaking gas pipe with duct tape in the U.S., but you know…

Maybe there’s an impending volcano eruption… the rotten egg smell is hydrogen sulfide which is not exactly good for you.

@dandylyon Is your apartment on or near Yangmingshan by any chance?

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Mains gas is very common here.

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Fair enough. Everywhere I’ve lived has been bottles, and just two of the eight apartments in my stairwell seem to have it (which I thought was odd).

Older, typically walkups, have bottled unless the owners paid the fee to install gas pipework, anything more modern will have piped if it’s available in the area.

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Hard to know without actually smelling it! From looking at apartments to buy it’s quite common to have “that smell” in anything no one has lived in for a while. Leave the windows open for a day and see how long it takes to build up again once the windows are closed. Try one of the many things already suggested if it comes back quickly.

I was shown an apartment for rent in Dazhi that had a foul odor. I followed my nose to the source and it turned out to be a portion of wall in a bedroom that was stained brown. When I got right up to the wall it smelled like Satan’s ass. Turned out to be a leaking sewer line inside the wall that the tenants couldn’t agree on whose responsibility it was to fix.

A lot of places don’t have u-bends in Taiwan, sewer gases come straight up. There’s a good chance it’s that. You don’t even notice it after a year or two. :slight_smile: [Edit: do what quandary said.]

Let’s not jump into conclusions yet.

@dandylyon , did you perhaps moved into a hot spring hotel?

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ahahahaha ive heard about this in taiwan

i’ve been here for two weeks though and i’ve done all the airing out, but it comes back everytime :’)

i would do that at home in europe too, but it’s been two weeks and it’s not like I’ve had any bad reactions like headaches or brain fuzz. just stinky. I can air it out and it’ll go away during the day time but by evening i can smell it again usually

i’m assuming i don’t have a boiler as i don’t need to heat any water to shower i’m assuming it’s electric? I only have a kitchen sink and bathroom which i use daily anyway