An "Unpleasant Fragrance"
One of my friends here in Hong Kong tells a story of coming home to her former hi-rise HK apartment one day to a horrendous odor in the kitchen. She went to the (on-site) building management to report that there was a bad smell in her kitchen. Well, I guess to the English-as-a-foreign-language set, the word "smell" is always a verb. Therefore, she could NOT make them understand.
Whereupon she dragged the guy up to her apartment and demonstrated...."Ah!", the man said after he finally realized what she was trying to say, "an unpleasant fragrance!"
I've had some problems of my own lately. All of the traditionally "wet" rooms in my apartment (the bathrooms and the laundry room) have vents in a side wall at floor level. And recently, a MOST unpleasant fragrance was emanating from them and, quite frankly, blowing me away.
I tried pouring Clorox down my drains - it would work for about 12 hours, and then the smell was back. I knew I wasn't the only one to have problems, as at certain times, I smelled the distinct odor of a strong mouthwash - so I know someone else was trying to kill the stench, too.
But...it was not until my "unpleasant fragrance" friend mentioned above was talking to me about SARS (2003 crisis here in HK) that I finally got my answer.
Long story short...SARS spread in a large apartment complex on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong THROUGH THE DRAINS. Most drains in your house that deal with waste water - toilets, sinks, laundry, tubs- have a U-shaped trap system installed in the drain piping. The idea is that this "trap" contains water - and that the water prevents any gaseous backup (the unpleasant fragrance) from coming into your home.
One of the keys to the fact that the SARS big spread through the drains was that the germ migrated on steamy water through the pipes of the apartment building - AND THE TRAPS WERE DRY!
The article went on to say that most people used to clean their bathroom/kitchen/laundry floors by sluicing water around - and it would automatically drain through the drains I described above. But these days, most people MOP their floors - less water, and, quite frankly, we haven't sluiced floors outside of a commercial kitchen or abbatoir in the US for many years. We're out of practice. Our sink/tub/toilet traps tend to stay wet - but not the floor drains.
So...the next time I smelled an "unpleasant fragrance", I hurried to empty a liter bottle of water down the "drain". Haven't had a problem since.
Whereupon she dragged the guy up to her apartment and demonstrated...."Ah!", the man said after he finally realized what she was trying to say, "an unpleasant fragrance!"
I've had some problems of my own lately. All of the traditionally "wet" rooms in my apartment (the bathrooms and the laundry room) have vents in a side wall at floor level. And recently, a MOST unpleasant fragrance was emanating from them and, quite frankly, blowing me away.
I tried pouring Clorox down my drains - it would work for about 12 hours, and then the smell was back. I knew I wasn't the only one to have problems, as at certain times, I smelled the distinct odor of a strong mouthwash - so I know someone else was trying to kill the stench, too.
But...it was not until my "unpleasant fragrance" friend mentioned above was talking to me about SARS (2003 crisis here in HK) that I finally got my answer.
Long story short...SARS spread in a large apartment complex on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong THROUGH THE DRAINS. Most drains in your house that deal with waste water - toilets, sinks, laundry, tubs- have a U-shaped trap system installed in the drain piping. The idea is that this "trap" contains water - and that the water prevents any gaseous backup (the unpleasant fragrance) from coming into your home.
One of the keys to the fact that the SARS big spread through the drains was that the germ migrated on steamy water through the pipes of the apartment building - AND THE TRAPS WERE DRY!
The article went on to say that most people used to clean their bathroom/kitchen/laundry floors by sluicing water around - and it would automatically drain through the drains I described above. But these days, most people MOP their floors - less water, and, quite frankly, we haven't sluiced floors outside of a commercial kitchen or abbatoir in the US for many years. We're out of practice. Our sink/tub/toilet traps tend to stay wet - but not the floor drains.
So...the next time I smelled an "unpleasant fragrance", I hurried to empty a liter bottle of water down the "drain". Haven't had a problem since.
posted by Susan in HK at 5:05 AM
1 Comments:
Wow! Scary to think about what seems to me to be a potential close brush with SARS. The same thing would happen when I worked in a college bookstore and we would do the same thing - water, water, water. That smell is foul, to be sure. A definite alarm system.
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