hello mamas. I have a situation that has baffled me as for why it happened, or alternative consequences. My 8 years old son's bedroom has stank for about 2 years (give or take some) we had an elderly cat that tended to potty where ever she liked, but she passed about 1 1/2 years ago. i just assumed that the smell was from her. periodically, i would clean the carpet in there (the easily accessable areas), spray down the carpet with lysol/frabreeze etc. it never went away. when my kids were at their dad's for almost 2 weeks, i had his bedroom closed the whole time. i went in there to put in a plant (bamboo-to help clean the air), and the smell was so strong that i gagged! (from the lack of circulation. normally, the smell isnt very strong, unless the door has been shut for a while)i started pulling up the carpet all round the room trying to find the smell and was going to get rid of it. I couldnt find the source. i gave up. when my kids came home, i was in his room hooking up his present and when i moved the dresser, the smell got worse. i mentioned it and stopped hooking up the dvd player, and began to search for the smell by the vent when my son admitted to me that he had been peeing behind his dresser at night for a while now. i was gobsmacked. i had no idea he had been doing this! i asked him why and he said the first time, he had to go so bad, he almost peed his pants (i honestly believe he wasnt fully awake/aware when he did this the first time) and the other times he said he didnt feel like going to the bathroom, that he was lazy.
well, he and i talked and he agreed he was going to clean it all up, he spent his own money to buy vinegar to get rid of the smell, and has been working on cleaning it up (but only when i tell him to, dont think he really knows how to clean it up.) but the urine stuck the padding to the hardwood floor, soaked the tack strip and trim. ideally i would just rip up the carpet in his room, but we recently inherited this house and are not sure we are going to be able to keep it, and i dont want to put any really effort into "home improvement" unless we keep it.
I feel that when he saw how shocked i was, and the fact that he didnt get into MEGA trouble made him realize how upset by this i was. i dont think this will every be a problem again, but does anyone have any ideas as to why it happened int he first place? or how to get the smell out? so far i have had him soak the area/carpet/trim in vinegar and pull up some of the padding. i actually cut a slice in the carpet to pull it back so he can get to it and am thinking about just tossing the tack board from that area. we also have a fan blowing directly on the carpet and bare floor under it to help dry it. any other suggestions?
oh, i also make sure he empties his bladder before bed, and have asked him if he gets up in the middle of the night to go, the answer is no, so i think the physical cause was because he didnt empty his bladder before bed, i dont feel like it is caused by a medical issue.
Thank you so much for all of your input! i cut a slit in the carpet from the wall to about 18" away, threw away the padding of the area that was soaked with urine, along with about a foot of the tack strip. Then i had my son use a spray bottle full of white vinegar and scrub the carpet, wooden floor, trim, and wall, he ended up doing it 3 times and using 3 liters of vinegar before the smell was gone! I had it propped up with fans blowing on it to make sure it was dry, wouldnt want to put it back down after getting rid of the pee smell just to develop a mildew problem! Thank you so much for all of your advice, and reassurance that it's just a weird boy thing. i feel confident that this will not be a problem again!
If you don't keep the house it will be incredibly difficult to sell with that smell. So I think you are just going to have to go all out cleaning and replacing carpet etc. Good luck.
My son sleep walked and peed in his leggo bucket.
He was a very heavy sleeper and wouldnt really "wake" when i waked him to pee at night ( because he peed the bed) and would end up goin and sleeping in wierd spots, etc. It has gotten so much better now that he is older -10.
I found that milk caused him to want to pee at night. So no milk after 4pm.
honestly I am not TOO surprised by this. Boys are strange like that. I remember my brothers would always pee down the vent-just because they could I think. And I think my sons have too b/c there is a little rusting around it-although they deny it. And I have known guys to keep a bottle in their dorm/frat rooms to pee in at night as well. :-(
I would hire a professional carpet cleaner to come in and clean it. They have wonderful solutions for stuff like this and they often have $99 specials for one room and a hallway.
Painting the floor or tack will only lower your value. people don't want to have to pull up strips of painted stuff off a hardwood floor then sand for hours and hours to get the paint off. It's worth the effort to do it right and clean the mess.
Odo Ban will remove the smell and sanitize the area. You will probably have to cut the carpet to get to the pad and soak the pad and anything else.
Sometimes kids will do something they're not supposed to do and keep on doing it. Who knows why?
I would cut out that piece of carpet and padding and dump the tack strip. You can always move furniture over it or use a throw rug to cover it up. If you still have the smell, maybe the Nature's Miracle in the pet stores would help? When we pulled up carpet do to our cat peeing on it I was worried that it had soaked through to the concrete beneath I asked the carpet salesperson what they would do. There was something common that they would spray on the floor to seal the smell out, but I can't remember what it was. You could always go to a carpet store and pretend to be interested in carpeting and ask them what they would use in that situation. Let me know if you find a solution. My 4 year old had been sleeping on the floor and consistently "wet" the floor, so we will be dealing with this soon. As to why it happened, well, I think he answered that. He didn't want to go into the bathroom for whatever reason and got into the habit of using the dresser. After a while he probably got so used to the smell that he didn't even smell it. Some kids at 7 or 8 still can't make it through the night without having to go. Most will just wet the bed. Your child actually got the sensation but didn't make it to the bathroom. Whether he was completely awake or not is a question. I remember as a child my brother would go across the hall to the bathroom in the middle of the night several times a night but would pee all over the floor and the toilet without bothering to pick up the seat because he wasn't awake enough to focus on going.
The smell isn't going to come out until you replace the padding and scrub the floor under, you might be able to salvage the carpet if you get it cleaned, but the padding has got to go.
I can't be of much help on ridding the odor, but I will tell you that one day upon entering our powder room, I noticed a particularly "full" litter box. My 6yo had just used the toilet so I asked him if he had accidentally spilled water into the litter box. He quickly admitted he had in fact used it instead of the toilet. Very quietly, I told him that was not okay, that it might be a problem for the cat, and never to do it again. I also then cancelled the play date he was getting ready for. Later, when I related this to my husband, he wondered aloud why the kid waited so long to experiment. It was only then, when I knew my son was out of earshot, that I cracked up! I don't think I would laugh though if my son peed on the carpet, in a corner or down a vent. Bed wetting was hard enough to deal with.
I hope it all turns out okay for you. I think its a very good idea to involve your son in cleanup. It will be a real eye-opener for him.
The answer to one of your questions is he had to go really bad
and didn't think he could get all the way to the bathroom.
And, at this age and level of understanding . . .
I do think he has "learned his lesson".
I think you should go ahead and pull up the carpet and padding.
Give him a fresh start in his bedroom.
I had a section of my carpet on which a dog consistently peed. I hired a carpet cleaner, a local company of many years who specializes just in cleaning carpets and furniture and not a $99 special one that comes out in a van. They cleaned that section of the floor several times. They pulled up the carpet and cleaned the pad and carpet separately; put it back together and cleaned it again together. They used a special cleaner to eliminate urine odor. It worked. Animals can smell the pee but people can't.
Well about the smell...there is not too much more you can do. My mom had a cat that was peeing on the carpet for a while. That urine smell is just so strong the only way she finally got ride of it was to seal the hard work floor under the carpet with wood stain. Then got new padding and new carpet. Only then was the smell truly gone. Before that she tried every cleaner and even got professional carpet cleaners who stated they specialized in getting pet odder out but it still didn't work. But even if you don't plan on staying in the house if you are going to sell it you need to get the smell out of that room so I would just get new carpet. As for the reason why your son is peeing in his room...not too sure. But I did have a friend with two sons who said she caught them doing the same thing in their room. I guess it's just a boy thing or something.
The only thing you can do for sure to the hardwood is to have it sanded and resealed. (You will have to sand down past the saturation point.) I know someone that does hardwood floors and he said urine is THE WORST smell when refinishing floors, but that will ultimately remove the odor.
As far as cleaning goes, try an enzyme-based cleaner. You can find them at the Dllar Store. Here's an article from Associated Content: http://bit.ly/eOREE4 Good Luck!
I would bite the bullet and just replace the carpet and padding in his room - you may not want to keep the house, but you probably won't have as good as luck selling it if the room smells like pee.
Hopefully he realizes now what happens when you keep going pee in a place that is not meant to be peed on - maybe he just wasn't thinking before.
I think kids can sleep walk and urinate in the corner. He is probably sleep-peeing :-) It happens! I have heard of sleep/peeing in the closets, drawers, etc..
As far as getting it out, can you cut out the old carpet and padding and
replace with a patch...wash down the cement?
I would try that, if you can match it :-)
Clean the carpet and padding really really well & let it dry 100%. Also, clean what you can on the hardwood & tack strip. Then paint them with primer. Primer will seal in any leftover smell in the wood. It will be white though. Since it's covered in carpet though it shouldn't matter too much. :) Good luck!
I think what he said was true -- he was just too lazy to go to the bathroom.
When I was his age, I remember waking up in the middle of the night one time, and being too lazy to go to the bathroom, so I figured I could pee in the bed and it would be dry by morning. The odor issue never occurred to me. Well, after lying in it for an hour or so, and it wasn't drying, I finally woke my mom up and told her I had peed by accident. She changed my sheets and I went back to bed.
Now, I only did that once, but since I remember doing that I can fully believe that an otherwise normal 8 year old would do something so irrational out of laziness. I think now that you caught him he'll stop. However, even if you sell the house you're going to have to replace the carpet -- unless the whole house is a dive, you can't sell a house with a strong urine odor in the carpet, and I can't imagine that any product will be able to remove two years of pee.
Wow, boys. I have a senior age husband that still pees outside sometimes - I just can't get into their minds. As far as clean up, this is what I did when I had a senior pet. Pull up the carpet, remove that section of padding, paint the tack board and flooring with KILZ (special paint used for smoke and water damage available at hardware stores or Home Depot), When paint is dry, clean the carpet with Nature's Miracle (available at the pet store). When carpet is dry, replace the padding with new (pading is fairly inexpensive) and relay the carpet. Good luck!
When I was a kid we had my little cousin live with us for a while. He would pee in the play room under the pool table. His thing was he wanted attention and that was a way to get it from my parents. Is he trying to get attention maybe since you are divorced? Hopefully you having him clean it up will help with him not doing it again. My nephew did it also when his little sister was born. Except his was poop. Yuck. Good luck and God Bless.
