Question from HEG
I moved into a condo building about 2 months ago. Shortly after moving in I noticed a pungent sweet smell (sort of like cherry lifesavers but sickly sweet and unpleasant) in the closet that houses our HVAC system. It doesn’t really smell like an air freshener, but more “chemically”. Our HVAC closet has pipes in it that run from our unit up and down to the below and above neighbors. I knocked on my neighbors’ doors and none of them noticed a similar problem. I can’t figure out what the smell is and it is completely driving me crazy. It seems to be stronger in the late afternoons and at night. It is much stronger if we open up our windows, which led me to believe that by opening the windows we were sucking air in from other inits and from thehallway and that this was causing the problem to exacerbate. When the windows are closed for days the smell dissipates substantially. So I recently purchased an Austin Air Healthmate plus air purifier thinking it would help but it appears to be making the problem worse. This may be due to the fact that the air purifier also sucks in air and is therefore pulling air into the HVAC closet and therefore in our apartment. Do you or any of your readers have any ideas what it might be? Do you have suggestions for how we could figure out what it could be? And do you have any suggestions about what we could do (short of moving) to fix the smell problem? Any suggestions would be very appreciated as we have an infant and are very concerned with making sure that the air she breathes is clean and healthy.
Debra’s Answer
I’m not sure what it might be, but you say that it dissipates if the windows are closed. Can you keep the windows closed? I was a little unclear about where the windows are in relation to the HVAC closet.
Readers, anyone have a similar experience? What did you do?
