I’ve got a problem that has me stumped and hoping to get some advice here! I have a small patio home with fantastic 305 foot deep well water, not municipal/city. My problem is with an annoying smell that comes from “ONLY” the bathroom faucet, cold line only. It is a smell that only lasts for seconds and taste of water is fine, but the smell lingers long enough to bother us when we brush our teeth, take a pill etc. I am 100% certain that it is the bathroom cold line only, verified this more times than I care to count. I’ve been working on this for a while now. Smell is not coming from the sink overflow, which has never had a drop of water in it.

First thing I did was to replace the faucet with attached supply lines, as original was 15 years old. No change. Then I rigged up a manual hand pump with a fitting which connected to the cold shutoff valve in the vanity. I hand pumped a solution of 200 PPM bleach to water through my entire water system (until that solution came out of the faucets). Then I shut all valves off and let that solution soak for 4 hours, then flushed the system. Smell was gone for 5 days, then came back. I was thinking maybe the concentration wasn’t enough or enough time to soak so I increased solution to 400 PPM bleach to water with a soak time of 12 hours. The smell was gone for about 8 days, then came back! During all of this, I had to replace my 15 year old water softener, so I got one that has a half pound of embedded charcoal in the resin which is to help with odors, popular with well systems around here. After the softener was installed, the smell was gone for over 3 weeks so yaaay, thought it was resolved, but nope….it just came back!

To my thinking, there must be some sort of very stubborn biofilm that exists only on this leg of my plumbing? I can't think of anything else as what I have done disrupts it somewhat, but not permanently. Any ideas as to what I can try next? Can I live with it……yup, I can but my girlfriend can’t, so any advice will contribute to strengthening my relationship! Thanks in advance…..

I would put a bowl/pail in the sink, to keep water from flowing into the drain, and see if you get the smell from the bowl/pail. If you still get the smell, how about getting a couple of water sample containers and get a sample from the stinky faucet and a sample from non-stinky faucet and get the water analyzed?

Fantastic post! I found it engaging, insightful, and very easy to follow. The explanations were clear and well-presented, and the insights proved to be incredibly valuable.



Edited 1 times.

What Steve didn't mention is if you DON'T still get the smell. This usually means you have organic gunk buildup in the overflow drain channels, within the sink body. This video explains it:

[www.youtube.com]