The unpleasant smell in your home that could end up costing thousands
It's important to be able to pinpoint strange smells in your home, as they could prove to be pretty costly if you don't get them fixed
Noticing weird smells in your home? Experts say that certain strange aromas could end up costing you.
When you catch an unpleasant smell in your home, it could be cause for concern, especially if you're on top of searching for the best ways to make your house smell good. Of course, sometimes these smells could be fleeting, and coudl just be fixed with a simple candle (we love The White Company's candles) or a good clean - but it's always better to be safe than sorry and check for what is causing the smell, especially since paying for any sort of home damage could prove to be pretty costly.
It's important to know how to identify what different smells could mean - and luckily, home experts from Essential Living gave us some tips on how to identify and avoid some of the most common weird smells that could come up in your home.
"While it may be a source of embarrassment, the worst thing you can do is ignore any persistent odours, especially if you can’t easily locate the problem," the experts said. Here are six of the most common concerning smells in your home, how much it could cost to repair them - and how to potentially avoid them in the future.
A rotten egg smell isn't too much to fix, even if the smell is persistent - but anyone who has had this odour in their home before knows it's really distracting and rather unpleasant.
"This smell could be coming from a number of things in your home, such as a gas line issue with your stove or your water heater," the experts noted. If this is the cast, it's best to call the fire department, and leave your house as soon as possible, as a gas leak could lead to a fire or an explosion.
Additionally, it's important to note that the price to fix a gas leak could vary significantly, as it's an emergent issue, which will hike prices up.
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"The average labour cost to repair a gas leak is £165 but the total cost can vary depending on the cost of materials and the amount of time it takes to repair the leak. Also, don’t forget that fixing a gas leak will usually be an emergency repair job which can hike up the prices significantly," they said.
Other smells that could cost you somewhere around £200-300 to repair are burning smells, rotting smells, and fishy smells, as they may be signs of issues in your home that could take less than a day to repair. For example, a rotting smell could be a sign of dead animals, which could be fixed quickly by a pest control specialist.
One of the worst culprits of a weird home smell could be a burst pipe in your home. If you notice a persistent, bad toilet smell wafting through your home, it could be a sign that your sewage is backed up, which could ultimately cause a pipe to burst.
"If you can locate it, a small blockage is relatively easy to clear yourself," the experts noted to woman&home. "However, if your own investigations can’t get to the bottom of the smell, contact a plumber. Note that the average cost to repair a burst pipe in your home can be as much as £7,500."
Madeline Merinuk is woman&home's US lifestyle news writer, covering celebrity, entertainment, fashion, and beauty news.
She graduated in 2021 with a B.A. in Journalism from Hofstra University, winning multiple student journalism awards, including a National Hearst Award, during her time there. After graduating, she worked at today.com, the digital site for the Today Show, where she wrote pop culture news and interviewed big-name personalities like Emily Ratajkowski, Haley Lu Richardson, Emma Corrin, and more.
Her personal interests, in no particular order, are: cheese, Joni Mitchell, reading, hot yoga, traveling, having multiple chapsticks in every handbag at all times, and dancing to ABBA songs as if she were in the Mamma Mia movies.
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