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Unfortunately there are no pictures of this case but I think you will
get the picture from the words.
This was a 1000 sq ft 2 bedroom rental north of Louisville, Ky that a lady
and up to 12 cats lived for 2 years. The entire house reeked of cat
odors including the full basement. The house had been cleaned out completely
and washed with TSP several times and heavily treated with OdorXit several
times as well. The odor was reduced but no where near acceptable levels!
I drove down from Cincinnati to get some first hand knowledge of what
was happening and see why what the rehabber was doing was not working.
It turns out there was one bedroom that was really really bad. The
entry and closet doors and frames had both been removed, some of the
flooring had been removed and part of the window frame trim had been
removed. All were really nasty smelling.
While inspecting the room, I noticed that the electrical boxes were rusted
badly even though they were of a newer design and could not have been more
than 10 years old when the wiring had been updated. I took my pen and pushed
it against the wall, and to my surprise it went right through! So we struck
a line at 24 1/2 inches off the floor and cut out the bottom 2 feet of dry
wall. This exposed all the electrical boxes and the interior of the wall.
The drywall was soaked and smelled worse than any that I have seen to
date. All of the electrical boxes were ruined as well as the duplex
connectors they housed and the exposed copper wire had turned green. There
appeared to be spray marks higher on the walls, apparently from the cats
spraying from on top of furniture.
Ultimately the rehabber removed 4 feet of drywall replaced the electrical
boxes, duplex connectors, switches and drywall after cleaning and spraying
the now exposed interior of all the walls in the room. This process
completed the odor remediation for the house and the project moved
forward to completion with no odor returning. | 