~ DEAD ? under house addition....how long the stink?

[Craig 930 RS]

Some damn animal crawled under the new addition to our house - about 8 inches clearance, so no way to get under....

Appears to have pulled down a panel holding floor insulation.
Been about2 weeks now, the smell in the room is pretty nasty.

How long to decay/smell b gone in 32-40 degree weather?
Anyone BTDT?

Rotted in Seattle -

[Dixie]

Answer: A long, long time.
You have to get that sucker out of there! Get a shovel and start digging.

PS: After removal, lime is your friend.

[Moses]

A good rough estimate is one day per ounce of decaying critter at 70 degrees.

[bell]

grab your camcorder...a flashlight ......and a remote control car.....and a roll of duct tape.
tape it all together so the cam and light are looking strait up.
even better if the cam has an output you could feed to a tv where you can see the feed while it's under there.
only way to really know which way to start digging.
good luck........

[Hugh R]

Bell, great idea, lime too. Heard a scratching noise in my wall recently and went in the attic and looked down a wall and found a stuck mouse between the studs, yeah I know it should have a top plate, but didn't. The mouse was too tired and dehydrated to get out, so I tossed down some water and cheese (for strength) and a rope. Hey better he get his energy back and climb out, rather than die in the wall? I also set two traps outside the wall in the attic. Someone later suggested that I should have attached a trap to a rope and gone trolling! Anyway, it got out and I may have caught it later. Sorry, this doesn't add to your dilema.

PS, another reason to use traps, not bait.

[M.D. Holloway]

any way to use a shop vac to grab it?

[dd74]

Just call someone to get it. Dead or not, if what crawls under houses in Kirkland is anything like the stuff here in L.A., I'd get an expert.

[competentone]

Originally posted by Craig911
... about 8 inches clearance, so no way to get under....

This is a new addition and you build it with only 8 inches of clearance???? What were you thinking?

Specific to your immediate problem: As already suggested, start digging to get it out. Hopefully it's not already too late; that rotten flesh odor gets into wood and you NEVER get it out completely. You'll think you've gotten it under control, then the humidity and temperature will hit a certain level and you'll smell it again.

Once you've removed the animal, wash the area with a bleach solution then rinse well. Follow-up by washing with hydrogen peroxide. Get a commercial ozone air cleaning machine and put it to work under the structure if you can keep the area "sealed" effectively.

[Jeff Higgins]

You will never get rid of the smell. The only solution is to burn down the new addition and start over. Start by backing the turbo up against the wall, rev the bejeezus out of it, and lift. That'll get 'er started...

[Eric 951]

Call PETA and tell them a fuzzy kitten is stuck under there and you can hear it meowing...then let those idiots take care of it.

[TerryBPP]

Hopefully you have a young baby (under a year). You can send him under there with a rope tied to his ankle.

[M.D. Holloway]

Terry, laugh now but that is exactly what my son wanted to do with my lil girl. They had it all planned out on how he was going to lower her into the Armidllo hole in our back yard and she would grab it!

I guess if we were true rednecks I would have let her!

[Jeff Higgins]

Imagine the stories she would have for her grandkids if it weren't for you, Mike. Party pooper.

[juanbenae]

Originally posted by competentone
This is a new addition and you build it with only 8 inches of clearance????

code says 18" minimum clearance, how did you. or your contractor get away with that little underfloor? this is an example of why the code is written.

good luck all the same. maybe release some flys to hurry along the rot with maggotts?

[david.avery]

Can you drill a hole in the floor and rent an endoscope? Knowing where the critter is half the battle. If you can localize it, you could pull a drill another hole over it, and maybe pour some H2SO4 down there

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphuric_acid#Uses

[Tim Hancock]

Next door neighbor had a dying skunk (I now make sure they are dead dead before I quit shooting at them in our backyard at night!) crawl between her insulation and floor in her crawl space. No-one could find the rotten b@stard until about a year later when her insurance company paid someone to remove her insulation for replacement and low and behold a skunk was found. Her house smelled like skunk for 1 1/2 years due to this.

By all means find out how big this critter is and if larger than a rat, i think you will want to get it removed somehow!

[targa911S]

Originally posted by Eric 951
Call PETA and tell them a fuzzy kitten is stuck under there and you can hear it meowing...then let those idiots take care of it.

LOL! Now I like that one.

[Craig 930 RS]

Damn funny advice.......! Love it.

OK code doods, the clearance is actually 18". I know exactly where it is - that is, the section of 18" channel. Within that 18" section, I can guess within 2 feet of where it is.

I ought to take a few pics.....
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In the meantime..I tried this:

Borrowed a neighbors CGT.....backed it into the side support rails to jolt the dead out. Just made a mess of the GT.


Next we tried the burn method:

[vash]

when i worked at a pet store, everytime we smelled death we would have a storewide pool to guess the type of critter. nothing like pulling a bloated rat out of a pile of aquariums. i never won.

i vote rat.

[juanbenae]

Originally posted by Tim Hancock
Her house smelled like skunk for 1 1/2 years due to this.

my house smells like skunk every sept/oct, but for entirely different reasons