Odor Remover

Survey says… the most popular odor problem is Pet Urine Odor by a 2 to1 margin.

Why is it so difficult and pervasive?

There are several reasons.

1. When urine spots on flooring, carpeting, bedding, clothing and other pourous or fiberous materials are allowed to dry, chemical changes occure to change the uric acid in all mamalan urine into ammonia gas and urea salt.
2. Urea salt takes 2 forms, the first permanently bonding to what ever it precipitates on, the second is crystallizes on the bonded version or other crystallized salt and remains water soluble.

The challenge to removing the odor is 2 fold.

1. Remove as much of the crystallized urea salt  as possible leaving as little behind as possible.
2. Neutralize the bonded urea salt so that it will stop producing the nasty mercaptan gas the we all know an love.

The real question is what will neutralize the bonded urea salt? There as many products on the market and the internet that claim to be able to quickly and easily and permanently eliminate the production of mercaptan gas by urine residue.  Many of them actually work under the right circumstances. I.E. no detergent residue present in the area being treated.

There are some additional considerations you should be aware of as well. The carpet padding used in residentual carpet installation is capable of storing a very large volume of urine residue. Further, it seems to either change or interfer with efforts to neutralize the urea salt that generates the mercaptan gas.

Most of the time mercaptan gas is produced when urea salt and hydrogen sulfide (HS) come together in the presence of water. Water is a catalyst and is necessary to facilitate the reaction. Because urea salt is really hygroscopic (it grabs water vapor right out of the air) when the relative humidity is higher than 50% there is enough water vapor to catalyze the reaction.  That’s why when you run the heat or A/C hard enough to lower the relative humidity below 50% there is no odor.  But come spring and open doors and windows and high humidity the odor returns big time.

Unfortunately, cat spray (not urine) does not play by the same rules but it produces an easily differentiated odor. One that is more musky than the smell of mercaptan and requires only warm air and no water vapor.  It is also more difficult to eliminate because it is almost always on vertical surfaces that liquids tend to run off.

The good news is that there is actually a product that will do both! OdorXit Concentrate works on both mercaptan producing urea salt and the oily scent spray.

Cleaning the involved areas before applying OdorXit Concentrate is really important, not just to reduce the amount of contaminate to be neutralized but in the case of scent spray, to emulsify the oil so that water based OdorXit Concentrate can do it job.

Like any chemistry experiment there are little nuances or secrets that need to be known, understood and executed. This information is available at the OdorXit Odor Wizard.

The reason that enzyme odor control product are so popular is mostly because they are so really available in pet stores, hardware stores and grocery stores. This is because they are very high profit and though they are guaranteed effective, almost no one exercises the guarantee when they do not work.

Do they work?

Yes, and no. If there is no detergent in the area where you are going to use the enzyme and you are willing to keep the area wet for several days, yes they can and often seem to work.  However, keeping a carpet, padding and flooring area wet for several days is an open invitation to grow mold in and on the carpet.  Lastly, when these products do work they produce lots of very nasty odor because they actually accelerate the decomposition of the materials (urine residue) that were causing the problem in the first place.

If you are trying to get urine out of wall to wall carpeting, you really need to educate your self on the size and complexity of the problem you are trying to solve.  Treating this kind of problem from the top of the carpet without removing the padding and cleaning the floor will result in additional damage being inflicted on your floor and make the problem much more difficult to eliminate in the long run. I have been there and done that in our rental properties before we discovered OdorXit in 1996.

If long term results are not what you are concerned about, a whole different set of rules apply. The other piece is that temporary fixes used to hide problems where money is likely to exchange hands is called fraud nearly everywhere.  Whether doing a temporary odor repair so that the landlord does not notice the problem before you move or covering up a odor problem in a house you are selling to a retail customer both qualify as fraud.  I have seen court decisions cost sellers more than $30000 for a  failed cover up attempt.

Everyone wants a silver bullet, but I can assure you the enzymes are not the silver bullet if one does in fact exist at all.

OdorXit Products, which are safe and effective on urine, feces, vomit, spoiled food, sour milk, dead animal smell, skunk, and a host of other bad smells contain no bacteria, enzymes or solvents (except water). Check out  The Odor Wizard for what OdorXit Products can do.

If you live in North America and you have a dog or cat that you allow out of the house the chances of them being sprayed by a skunk sometime in their life is near 100%. And if you are reading this article the chances are pretty good it has already happened in the last few days.

Striped North American Skunk

There are all sorts of home brew concoctions from tomato juice to baking soda that are supposed to remove some or all of the odor. I have found that there are 2 that work on dogs, cats, people and other animals. The following is a description of what they are and how to use them!

1. A guy named Paul Krebaum who was a chemist employed by Molex, Inc. of Lisle, Illinois who was working with some chemicals called “Thiols” which are chemicals that chemically very similar to skunk spray and smell very much the same needed something to clean his lab and lab equipment.

Because of the short product life, packaging and shipping difficulties the formula he developed and subsequently published in the October 1993 edition of Chemical and Engineering News putting it into the public domain. Unfortunately this issue of CEN is not available on the web.

The formula was and is 1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup of baking soda and 1 teaspoon of liquid detergent like Dawn or Joy. Once combined, the mixture must be used within an hour or so.

Do not put this mixture in a sealed container because it produces free oxygen that will cause the container to explode.After washing the affected area with shampoo, wipe the mixture onto the all the places where there is skunk spray. Be careful not to get any mixture into the eyes, nose, ears or mouth of whatever you are treating. After a few minutes rinse it out with very warm water.

Because the hydrogen peroxide is a bleach, it may lighten the hair being treated. It will also remove most of the odor. Do not use this mixture on carpet, furniture or clothing, it will bleach them too.

2. The other other approach is to use a product called OdorXit Concentrate. This is a very safe mostly water product that is available on the web and at selected quality hardware stores and REIA groups around the country.It is made of water and small quantities of water soluble essential oils that neutralize the skunk spray residue on contact. This product is very safe and effective on its own after shampooing the affected area and it is very effective after using the peroxide formula above as a stop gap fix for the odor. It can also be used on furniture, carpet, flooring, clothing, cars and other water tolerant materials.

If you have not already shampooed the affected area use a good lather producing shampoo to break down the oils that make up the skunk residue. Mix 1 ounce of OdorXit Concentrate with1 quart of warm water. Use a small (3? x 5?) kitchen sponge to apply the mixture to the contaminated area. OdorXit concentrate will not irritate the eyes, nose or mouth, but should not be allowed to penetrate deeply into ears.

There is yet another product that can be used under houses, and in houses that have been skunk sprayed. It is called OdorXit CLO2. This product is 2 powders contained inside a very special Tyvek packet and is activated by water vapor or liquid.  In as little as 24 yours a crawl space can be completely cleared of skunk spray odor.

If you are willing to not be inside your house for 24 yours, that same can be accomplished inside your house as well.  Using the slow release packet inside takes a day or two longer, but does not require you to remove your family and pets from the area being treated.

There is now no need to have your cats litter boxes be the nasty places where they do their thing. With the ever advancing work of science and odor control, it is possible to create a litter box environment that does not stink for you or your cat(s).

How can this be true? An odorless non-mechanical litter box that doesn’t stink… You Bet!

You see, cats use a 3 part process to control the box odor but we humans do our best to interfere with their process with stuff like clumping litter and scented litter.

The 3 part process include:

1. Part 1 is supposed to be to dig a little pit in the litter. But if the litter is nasty with stool, or full of urine clumps part 1 is not executed.
2. Part 2 is supposed to include peeing or pooing in the pit, but if there is no pit it just lays on top of the litter and smells very bad until a human or a small dog looking for a tootsie roll takes it away.
3. Part 3 is supposed to include scooping some litter into the little pit to cover the pee or poo  and limit the odor produced by the excrement.

If your cat can’t dig a pit because of clumps of litter laying on top of the bulk of the litter, you can either scoop more often, or stop using clumping litter. I prefer the latter. Clumping litter was a great marketing idea to make litter easier to clean by people and harder to use by cats. It also insures that you will use more litter than you need to use and worst of all, it has a powder (the clumping agent) that turns to something like cement in kitten lungs.

Given that your cat does part 1, the chances are pretty good that it will do part 2.

Given part 1 and part 2, getting them to do part 3 can be a little iffy especially if they are used to clumping litter. But since all 3 parts are hard wired into their natural behievior, it will eventually come back.

Now for the odor. Since there are no clumps to scoop out and your cat is at least trying to perform the complex 3 part process, controlling the odor (which is already minimized) is quite simple with the proper products.

1. After dumping the 10 cent per pound Oil-Dri litter in the garbage can on garbage night, use a plastic scraper to scrape the wet litter out of the bottom of the freshly dumped litter box.
2. Spray the inside bottom of the litter box with OdorXit Concentrate diluted 1 part concentrate to 30 parts of water. Using a trigger sprayer, cover the inside of the box with spray.
3. Add 3 quarts of litter.
4. Return the litter box to its normal place. If you have a cover for the litter box, spray 1 pump of OdorXit Magic on the inside of each side and the top of the cover. This will absorb all the excrement odor produced by your cat for at least a week.

Now that your cat has a fresh, clean, odor free place to use as a toilet, the chances are much better that it will actually use it more consistently. And don’t forget, you should have a litter boxes per cat plus 1 as an alternate.

Remember, a cats nose is way more sensitive than yours is, and they get much closer to the litter box with their sensitive nose than you do.  So make using the litter box a pleasent as possible. The reward will be yours.

I was listening to a talk  show this morning about all the new products that are being presented at the Hardware Show this week in Las Vegas.

Everyone was talking about how their product was mold resistant,  or kept mold from growing on their product, or how their product somehow magically killed mild before it became a problem in the house it was applied.

There were house venting systems, filter, furnace add-ons and lots of other stuff to rid a house of mold. There was the dehumidifiers, humidifiers, ionizers, ozone generators, all designed to rid houses of mold.

The bottom line for me is that any study of the mold issue will show that there is mold everywhere. Inside, outside, and all around. Mold and mold spores are an essential part of life on planet earth and with out mold fungus and its procreative buddies mold spores, we would not be living at all, because all the plant material that we do not eat would just pile up and rot.

Vulchers feeding on a dead animal

Mold, like vultures, were put here for a very good reason. Both eat dead and useless materials returning them as high quality dirt before they become a problem.

We look at a gaggle of vultures where their featherless heads eating a dead animal on the edge of a water hole somewhere in Africa.

Ugly, ugly, ugly, BUT if the animal was left to rot, it would poison the water hole and all the animals who would drink there would die.

Mold does the same thing by eating dead trees, bushes, sticks, leaves, vegetation, and other fibrous materials and turns them into high quality dirt and in this case some very expensive and tasty Morel mushrooms.

Morel mushrooms eating dead wood

But drywall is not on your list! Sure it is. Wet drywall is dead and should be replaced and the mold is just helping. Not exactly what you were hoping for but what is happening just the same. The real down side is that your body is being attacked by the mold spores as well. That why you feel sick, tired and unhappy.

Q - What about all these products, do they work?

A - Most do work within the scope of their design.

Q - What about helping my mold allergy?

A - Most are better than the drugs your doctor gives you for the same problem.

Q - So what can be done to relieve the mold issue in a house.

A - Lots!

• Reduce the level of mold in your house to a close to zero as you can get it.
• Stop bringing new mold into your house which is easier said than done.
• Eliminate the water standing in your basement, or crawl space, or under you kitchen sink and washing machine.
• Stop throwing sweaty clothes on the floor and in clothes baskets.
• Make sure the drier vent does not leak into the house.
• Use the exhaust fan in the shower.
• Take the garbage out every day.

If you already have visible mold growing on walls, ceiling, tile, grout, etc. you will have to take a more aggressive path and kill the visible mold fungus you have. Bleach will not do the job. You might want to try the ClO2 product from OdorXit and follow it up with a mixture of water, Joy detergent and ammonia to remove the dead mold residue (which is often very toxic).

Once you have the mold level down to something reasonable work on the list.