Help with bathroom odors? (subfloor, how much, drains, sink)

[vicket]

The bathroom upstairs has been cleaned, sanitized, walls and floors washed, deodorized...everything I can think of. But it still smells (sorry everybody) of urine. I have cleaned it many many times and the smell is still there, even when no one has used it.
There is no carpet.
Can anyone help? None of our other bathrooms has this problem.
Thanks!

[Pitt Chick]

maybe the wax ring need to be replaced...

[CHTransplant]

Originally Posted by Pitt Chick

maybe the wax ring need to be replaced...

That'd be the first thing I'd check - a failed seal under the toilet. A relatively easy (albeit somewhat messy) DIY project.

[jimboburnsy]

I concur about the wax ring. Was this bathroom remodeled? Sometimes people will re-tile a bathroom but will not put an offset over the old drain flange. It doesn't guarantee that you will have a bad seal, but makes it much easier to bollucks-up the toilet installation. If you do not have a good seal with the wax ring some dirty toilet water can work its way into the space under your toilet and ferment, imparting that distinctive, full-bodied pee aroma to the room or you just get bad gases bypassing the trap in your toilet. It really is a pretty simple job, you just need a bit of elbow grease and willingness to get dirty for a moment. Check out this manual for a better idea of whether or not you can DIY: Replacing A Toilet Wax Bowl Ring - Fixing The Constant Foul Odor In The Bathroom

[southernnaturelover]

And if you have plywood floors the pee will soak into the plywood and not go away no matter how much you recover it.

[mrpeatie]

An issue I've seen a time or two is that drains smell when they aren't used. So pour a cup or two od water down the drain each morning. This worked in a building I used to work in.

[pekemom]

I don't know if this is your situation but I noticed an absolute sewer smell in our bathroom although it was cleaned. What happened was the garden tub hadn't been used in a couple of years because we always used the shower, or the regular tub in the other bathroom. Somehow it dried out in the pipes and stunk. Now that I run water every once in a while in the garden tub if we haven't been using it, it has quit stinking.
I agree with mrpeatie.

[cdelena]

I had a similar problem and pulled the toilet to replace the wax ring but found it was not the ring (which of course I replaced with the unit up) but the floor under the toilet. A cleaning before reinstalling the toilet solved the problem.

[southernnaturelover]

My house used to belong to my grandfather before he passed away. He was elderly and disabled so many times he didn't exactly "ring the bowl". What happened was the pee went into the crack under the toilet, so even though everything visible in the bathroom was cleaned, the pee was still under there. When I moved in I decided to gut the whole bathroom, and when I pulled up the toilet I discovered that the pee had gotten under the linoleum and soaked into the plywood subfloor. I replaced all of the subfloor and the smell was gone.

[CHTransplant]

Originally Posted by pekemom

I don't know if this is your situation but I noticed an absolute sewer smell in our bathroom although it was cleaned. What happened was the garden tub hadn't been used in a couple of years because we always used the shower, or the regular tub in the other bathroom. Somehow it dried out in the pipes and stunk. Now that I run water every once in a while in the garden tub if we haven't been using it, it has quit stinking.

One function of the "trap" on your sink drains is to maintain a water seal against sewer gases rising through the pipe. If the trap dries out, the seal is gone and it's now an open line into the main sewer vent stack.