Smell of burning rubber inside basement bathroom archived

newtoallthis

Dec 7, 2009 at 5:51am

Here's a mystery. Our downstairs bathroom suddenly had a distinct burning rubber smell on Saturday morning. Bathroom includes washer/dryer, toilet and stall shower, none of which were in use.

We had turned on the steam heat for an early morning blast, but we've done this a million times before and never noticed that smell. There is a steam pipe that runs long the ceiling of that bathroom. That's the only thing I can think of that would heat something up, but what rubber would be in the ceiling?

Anyway, it dissipated and didn't happen again during the weekend and didn't happen this morning when I cranked up the heat.
Any ideas?

n66

Dec 7, 2009 at 7:02am

Were you using a new appliance, such as a brand new hair dryer or hair iron? This smell is common.

mommyrock

Dec 7, 2009 at 8:42am

do you have a deep freeze or refrigerator in the basement nearby? or any other big appliances with 'always on' motors? when our basement fridge died, it let off a burning smell the last day. but it didn't even smell like it was coming from the fridge, which was weird. so we didn't even realize until a few days later (and lost all the food in it!). perhaps it is possible that the smell originated elsewhere but dissipated everywhere else before you got there and was just sort of trapped in your bathroom last.

kmk

Dec 7, 2009 at 8:58am

My daughter's violin teacher evacuated the house when she had a because of a strange burning smell.
A week later he had found the source of it...a big bug had "fried" in his halogen torchiere!

newtoallthis

Dec 7, 2009 at 9:09am

Hi. No new appliances and no fridge in the basement (I hadn't thought of fried bugs!)
I had done some vacuuming and moving of furniture right above that room the night before the smell happened. I had thought perhaps the vacuum smell had gotten in there but I figured would have also smelled that on the first floor where I was vacuuming. So mysterious...