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

I have come across pet urine smells in many homes. The worst to get rid of is by far cat urine. For some reason I have been able to neutralize dog urine smell but I have had such a difficult time getting rid of cat urine smell. I was recently rehabbing a property that had 2 dogs and one cat previously living there. It was so bad that we had to pull up all of the carpet and all of the padding and basically start from scratch. This is where we notice where all the smell was really coming from. There were massive stain marks on the bare wood floors and there was no question where they were “doing their business”. I did a bunch of research on the internet and found a home remedy that really worked well. Get regular scented Pine Sol and mix it with water. I then poured in a whole bottle into a 3 gallon mop bucket and went to work on the bare floor. This really seemed to do the trick. The smells, including the cat smell was virtually eliminated. We let the wood floor dry because I applied it pretty generously and put new carpet and padding down and it really seemed to do the trick. In a different property that we had the same problem with, we simply pulled up the carpet and padding and replaced it with new carpet and padding and you could still smell the urine smell after a week or so. Try the Pine Sol trick and good luck. Let me know how it goes.
ENJOY!

Hi folks! Everyone had some wonderful ideas! I have heard of Kilz and Home Depot also has an orange cleaner called Zep orange cleaner. That stuff does wonders on cleaning just about anything! That isn't why I am posting though.

We have three rather large dogs and I am a fanatic about using nothing that could harm them. Therefor most my cleaners are home made, usually all natural or simple home remedy type things. The very best odor neutralizer I have found is Lemon Juice. Just put it in a spray bottle full strength and spray away! You might think everything will smell lemony fresh, I wish that were true however what it does is take ALL smells away. It's cheaper than Febreze any day!

Now I will say for heavy problems Kilz or any enzyme remover will be necessary.

Also a little trick my grandmother taught me to keep animals out of your trash is to spray it liberally with straight ammonia. Raccoons, cats, and dogs will generally not want to get past that smell to find out what 'treasures' that might be had.

Thank you to all who gave such great advice! I am confident that I will now be able to attack this problem with such a full arsenal of pet smell eliminating weapons.
Goldberry

When looking at homes that are or not vacant you're going to want to arm yourself w/flee spray. Keep it in your car and if the home you're looking at smells like pets lived there go back to your car and spray down. You don't want to take these pests home. Just a tip.
Happy hunting!!
Earl in MI

Kilz actually has 3 different products. Make sure you use the one that says it seals odors.

I work for a older lady with 3 cats and she is occasionaly incontinent. We use Odoban, she gets from Sam's club and this product works great and is not to strong of a chemical smell like bleach or ammonia. The smell goes away quickly you really can't tell you used a cleaner after 1/2 hour.

I have come across pet urine smells in many homes. The worst to get rid of is by far cat urine. For some reason I have been able to neutralize dog urine smell but I have had such a difficult time getting rid of cat urine smell. I was recently rehabbing a property that had 2 dogs and one cat previously living there. It was so bad that we had to pull up all of the carpet and all of the padding and basically start from scratch. This is where we notice where all the smell was really coming from. There were massive stain marks on the bare wood floors and there was no question where they were “doing their business”. I did a bunch of research on the internet and found a home remedy that really worked well. Get regular scented Pine Sol and mix it with water. I then poured in a whole bottle into a 3 gallon mop bucket and went to work on the bare floor.

Once the Pine Sol dries, then take a paint roller and roll KILZ (Primer, Stain blocker, and odor blocker) on to the stained area. Once it dried, then put down your carpet or tile and this will block out any smell you put in front of it. This really works. It has passed the test of my dogs nose.
Give this a try and let me know how it goes.
This really seemed to do the trick. The smells, including the cat smell was virtually eliminated. We let the wood floor dry because I applied it pretty generously and put new carpet and padding down and it really seemed to do the trick. In a different property that we had the same problem with, we simply pulled up the carpet and padding and replaced it with new carpet and padding and you could still smell the urine smell after a week or so. Try the Pine Sol trick and good luck. Let me know how it goes.
ENJOY!
Happy Investing.

A few years ago, while traveling around the country and working with Real Estate Investor Associations in various cities, I was introduced to a different way of dealing with pet and smoke odors in properties. There are sprays that are enzyme based that actually break down the molecules that are producing the smell so that they no longer have the ability to produce odor. You do have to get down to the source of where the odors are coming from, and if it is a porous surface like carpet, it may involve saturating the carpet, the pad, and spraying the flooring underneath. There's no real scrubbing involved though, which I think has advantage over some cleaners.
A few of the enzymatic sprays that are available at the present time include various Simple Solution products, Ewww, Nature’s Miracle, Zero Odor and Fizzion. My own experience, plus reports from others indicate that all of these products do the job. Nature's Miracle and Simple Solution seem to rate the highest.
The above mentioned methods work also, but sometimes a good chemical reaction that eliminates the odor can beat scrubbing or cover-up with products like KILZ. Hopefully this broadens your arsenal against offensive odors. Either that, or buy a lot of clothespins for your nose.

Don’t settle for anything less than KILZ to cover any cat or dog urine. I tried at least 2 other products that were cheaper and it ended up costing me more in the long run and the smell was just as bad if not worse than it was when I started. I was frustrated and angry that I listened to my contractor and let him try something cheaper. We ended up using KILZ and my problems were solved.
KILZ works great and it was a little more in cost than some of the other competitors, but it is not more expensive than some other treatments that might not work as well. It was a testimony to me, that I should not question if it will work…………just go with what you already know will work and don’t play around with a possible deal breaker. If I applied the other treatments and thought it would work and put back down my new carpet, the smell would have come back and I may need to put down more carpet and then I am wasting my time and money. That is money OUT of my pocket.
Go with what you know works and is the best for the job…….KILZ!!!!! If you don’t like the smell of KILZ, then you should do what a good friend of mine told me to do. Put an 8 oz. bottle of vanilla extract in a 5 gal. Bucket and this will help with the smell.

HAPPY REHABBING!!!!!

Thank you so much for all the comments!
I love that we are all able to share best practices and products that work better than others. The thing that Killz does is to encapsulate the stain and smell into the surface and doesn't let it through. It works great in basements to cover and encapsulate the musty smell that is associated many times with basements. Please keep the comments coming in. I love that we are able to share information with each other on this forum.
Thanks and Happy Investing!

Matt.

I'm pleased to see some natural solutions being mentioned here. As a natural health advocate, I like to avoid chemical products whenever I can find a suitable natural alternative. A very good friend, with whom I am co-authoring a book, Dr. Myles Bader, currently offers a book through telebrands on television that is selling really well because it is so effective, not sure I remember the exact title, but it is something like "Natural Solutions to Things that Bug You," and there is a companion book regarding larger pests, wild animals, pets, etc. I encourage you to seek out "green" solutions to pet and pest related issues in investment properties, exposure to additional chemicals is just not good for people, animals, or the environment.

This is all good stuff but everyone is forgetting something,when a cat "goes" its not down its more like a spray.
Something else you should check is the walls three feet up from floor, you can do this with a black light if you find cat urine, your better off replacing than trying to get rid of it with whatever you try.

Aaron-n-Suzy

I totally agree.
The black-light test will freak you out. You are totally right. When I am going into a house to get rid of smells, I will always spray Kills on the walls to encapsulate any smells that may have made it up the wall. This works great when it comes to smokers. Smoke will go into the paint and will keep coming out even though you paint with fresh paint unless you apply Killz. This will actually encapsulate the smell and won't penetrate at all. When I am really getting after a house to get rid of all kinds of smells, I will Kills the walls, floors, ceilings, and wood trim. Once the primer is put in, I'll then go back and paint with tinted colors to my liking. This works great with pets, pests, and smoke smell.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the comments.
They help me a ton!

Happy Investing!
Matt.