Pet smells in rehabs

Goldberry,

My mom has come across that a couple of times. What they have done is treated the walls with KILLZ and they also ripped up the carpeting and the padding and treated the surface of the floor with KILLZ. This took away the nasty pet oders and it also works well with homes that have been smoked in.

Hope this helps!

Jen

One very successful RE investor I met once said he loved when he found homes with strong pet smells. The reason is that is scared off most people and yet he said it was simple to get rid of by ripping out carpet and using a special deoderizer. I don't remember what kind it was but Jen in her posting above gave a recommendation that seems like a good product!

Nancy

You could try a broom & pool bleach & water (50%-50% mix) for the floor after ripping up the carpets. After it dries if the odor is still there do it again. After that put on the KILLZ, sometimes this has to be done twice also. Be sure to use water base KILLZ or it will peel underneath the carpet.

Lea
SPR Property Solutions, LLC

The ammonia smells from what you think is pet urine can also be from meth. My inspector told me that meth houses can smell alot like pet urine.

Cathy

I'm not sure if that is how it is spelled but it is a product that we used in nursing homes get smells out of carpet. It really works!! Good luck.

My wife had a condo with the smell of cat urine in it and after I ripped out the carpet I used Kilz primer on the sub flooring and it worked. i just rolled it on bigger then the stain. Remember, the sub floor is going to get covered up with something (carpet/tile) good economical and time saving fix. I like solutions that follow the K.I.S.S program.

Earl in MI

You can also use a product called binz, which you want to double or triple your painting costs as this stuff is expensive & needs to be applied with 2 or 3 coats.

Jason,
Thanks for that heads up. Cost containment is a great thing to keep running in the back of your mind!!
Earl in MI

Home Depot sells an industrial strength carpet cleaner which works well on stains and odors. It is in a red plastic jug and sells for about $8.00. Unfortunately, I am out of it and do not have the name of the product. It may be worth trying and saving the cost of replacing the carpet, if it still looks good. We use it often.

UPDATE: I found an empty jug in the barn to be recycled. The product name is "ZEP commercial" high traffic carpet cleaner. We use a hand pump, garden sprayer to apply the product. As always, read and follow directions, including the soak time.

I have purchased 2 homes with pet order. Rather its wood or concrete under that nasty carpet and pad, it will need to be treated. A quick and inexpensive treatment is, equal parts of water, bleach and vinegar. Vinegar actually kills the enzyme that is in urine that produces the smell. Once the area is dry, you could put kilz or just put some polyurethine over the area.

Animal odors go deeper in a surface than a carpet and pad. What happens in most cases is cat's once they start going to the bathroom in your home instead of a litter tray is you end up facing a problem that goes deeper than the surface.

What occurs is urine gets into the sub-flooring which is usually 3/4 plywood or should be. The urine gets into the wood and continually spreads every time the cat or dog urinates. Depending on how long -(years or months) will determine the extent. In almost every case you have to rip up the 3/4 sub-flooring and replace it.

After you rip it up; a fan, to dry out the floor joists, which are again almost always damage, not structurally, but from saturation over time. A cat urinating just once can stink-up a whole house. A lot of time's its the owners fault for not accomadating facilities for the animal. Its appropriate to get a special product and do an airless spray application, is the best way on all the open/exposed floor joists. This example, is for an area were carpet/hardwood/laminates are covering the top surface.

Were this stuff really reeks havoc is the area's in a home covered with ceramic tile/marble/granite and cement floors. Once urine gets in concrete floors and the cement adhesive used to install tile, your floor is ruined. This step is more costly. What happens is the urine seeps through the grout joints on the tile and absorbed by the material that holds it down resulting in the urine speading to the surfaces, under the tiles and you can't get material under the tiles to neutraize the odor. You have to rip out the tile along with the sub-flooring - (3/4 plywood) under the tile.

Tile comes up a lot harder than a carpet. We have an A or B situation here. Spray the joists same as above. (When you need to have special painting products its best to seek out a "manufactuers rep" from Ben Moore or Pittsburg paints), for example, to refer the specific professional prodiuct to use relevant to the condition. By that I mean if an animal has been urinating for years and years, its a rip-out to the joists. If its only been going on a short time, then the "manufactuers rep" will reccommend the right product for the specific condition. You can tell by the smell for one thing but with carpet and pad up, you can see the extent and you may just need to replace a smaller area.

This is critical because you don't want to just throw a bunch of paint in the area unless its a very small section. The damage goes beyond that and spraying the joists a couple of coats will solve the problem for remediation. Painting a sub-floor is a watse of material and time. The problem isn't fixed and the smell will always be there after a 30-60 day curing period for the paint.

A. Rip out all. B. dry the floor joists good . C. Spray the entire area of the joists with an airless apray application. D. Replace the sub-flooring. E. Install carpet or tile on new sub-flooring.

Additionally, just so you know the only product that works to seal concrete is masonry sealers and expoxies. This product would be needed for facilities/homes; to accomomadate animals, because if this was my house, it would have bnever happened in the first place. All masonry needs to be sealed. Masonry sealers are the product of plexiglass - (B-52) so urine doesn't go through it.

If you have animals I would suggest to apply sealers or expoxies -(clear) to any tile/cement floors, so you won't have to deal with this kind of a mess, that occured,because the surfaces weren't sealed and the urine went right into the material. If people knew these techniques they would have never had this problem in the first place.

"Urine doesn't seep through masonry sealers and expoxies".

I hope this can help for now and in the future. If you are animal lover, like me, you can accomadate your pets appropriately too.

Good luck

Kevin

i have that once you rip out the carpet, treat the area with straight(full strength) bleach. i had a cat that was an inside cat but now is an outside cat.we had gone on trip, had neighbor checking on cat, cat missed us so he
decided to make our rug in dining room his personal litter box needless to say
when we returned home we opened the door and gagged.my wife tried all the above remedies none worked. then one day she decided to replace all the carpet in the house. i said to myself here is my chance. so i ripped up the
dining room carpet,smell the cement underneath and there was the smell srill strong as ever. i went into the garage and got the bleach. poured it directly
on the area, let dry and resmell. tomy surprise the smell went from 100 percent to about 3 percent but was still there. so i retreated with straight
bleach, let dry,resmelled,and no smell. not even faint.

cost of traetment: one gallon of bleach $1.89

geo