Cat Pee

[Jim Katen]

Garden apartment converted to condo, built in 1960.

Slab on grade construction with vinyl asbestos tiles and carpet on top of them.

About 200,000 cats have been peeing in the corners of the rooms in this unit. The unit is now vacant and the carpets have been cleaned, but the smell is enought to knock you over. I have no doubt that the pee has penetrated the concrete floors.

So, what are the chances that the smell can be completely removed?

At minimum, I'm thinking, pull the carpets, the VATs, & the affected baseboards. Soak the floors & lower walls with enzyme-based urine neutralizers. Run an ozone machine in the unit for a few days. Seal everything up with Kilz or BIN.

What do you think?

- Jim in Oregon

[hausdok]

Hi Jim,

Sounds like a plan. I can't think of a better one; unless you're thinking of blowing her sky high, I which case I'm your man. A little Det cord, a little bit of TNT, a few sacks of flower and we can implode her like a vacuum cleaner bag.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[mgbinspect]

As a disastor restoration contractor, I always left those problems up to ServePro or Service Master, and they are probably good folks to call. Some of the messes those guys cleaned up for me were downright miraculous. I mean, when you hear on the news about the person that decided to terminate a bunch of random folks and they weren't discovered for a week, who ya gonna call? Yep, the afore mentioned. They are the original Thing One and Thing Two of the worst messes on the planet. If anyone has a trick for getting cat pee out of concrete it will be them.

That being said (or written, eh typed. Yeah that's it.) I don't know if this works, but:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2266936_remove- ... crete.html

Of course, after I posted it, I noticed it has a pretty meager rating.

[Rob Amaral]

Punting to the servpro-types is a good thing... When you bring them into the conversation, it makes your job easier...

Those neutralizers may work, but there is no guarantee... it may require slab removal, UV light surveys, etc..

[kurt]

I don't think it will work.

I'd punt it to ServiceMaster; let them take the heat.

[Ben H]

Burn it.[:-dev3] Or punt it. Personally, burning sounds more fun.

[kurt]

Yeah, burn it.........

Reason I'm skeptical is I've had enough of these, with enough clients that have tried everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, and none of them had success getting rid of the stink completely.

There's a reason God made the stink the way it is; He, in all his righteous glory, made sure that cats would have the last word on all matters relating to human-cat interaction, that is, until Man unleashes the sword of Damocles upon the feline, smiting the cat with righteous fury and anger, as any decent Man would do to a cat that would stink up his world.

Amen..........

[Jim Morrison]

Say it again, somebody!

[kurt]

I knew the choir was out there this morning.........

[Scottpat]

Don't forget that urine, aka. Cat Pee is very "hygroscopic", the salts n the dried urine attract moisture and kind of reconstitutes it! This is why the odor is so hard to get rid of.

I was called a few years ago by an apartment complex owner who had a very similar issue and I ended up learning more about animal and human urine than I ever really wanted to know! They ended up removing the bottom 4' of drywall and even had to remove and replace some of the wall studs that were soaked with cat pee. Do not use a Kilz type product, it did not work on this unit. After the floor was cleaned with a light acid solution (they used white vinegar) they sealed the concrete with an epoxy floor sealant. The same stuff you use on a garage floor. Last I heard it was working just fine and they had no cat pee odor.

The reason for removing the drywall was that when a cat pees it is sometimes sprayed by male cats and it ends up on the walls as well as the floor.

This is a link to my blog where I wrote about one of the worst homes I have ever found with cat pee..... http://activerain.com/blogsview/530273/ ... th-a-view-

[Les]

Scott's comments are right, as usual!

I have a boutique restoration company and we always punt to Serve-pro and Service Master for cat pee. Our job is to understand and authorize their work on behalf of a client. I have been in awe of white vinegar for decades; it will do amazing things.

We have found there is a very limited use(s) for "kilz" type products and all of them concern smoke or fire. Three or four times per week I will look at a "mold for gold" job that was bungled with all purpose stain killers and chlorine bleach.

anecdotal - we have never been able to get a vinyl asbestos floor dry, completely dry. There is something about the initial installation that allows all seams to hold moisture. While the tile are not porous, the concrete and seams present an additional problem.

[Jerry Simon]

There's a reason God made the stink the way it is; He, in all his righteous glory...

Yep. Wife was just musing on our evening walk last night...what if God didn't make bird poop so it could be easily washed away with rain? That's righteous glory.

Now, anyone wanna talk raccoon pee?

[asihi]

A few years back, I had a house that had about 7 to 10 cats running around. They had one big litter box called the basement. The smell slapped you in the face when you opened the basement door. I put on my mask, walked to the bottom of the stairs and turned around and went back up. The only thing that would save this place was a match and a gallon of gas. I mean this place was a disaster. The garbage through out the building was knee high.

After everything we talked about and everything we've seen, my client still wanted the house. I directed him to a company that does crime scene clean up similar to this company http://www.acceleratedbioscenecleanup.c ... p#homicide

By far the worst house I've ever seen.

[Tom Raymond]

There is a cat rescue org near me that is currently in a huge former restaurant building. At any given time they have 250 to 300 cats living there. I was there once to drop off a cat and the stench nearly knocked me over outside in the parking lot. I can't imagine what it smells like inside.

The building is for sale.[:-yuck]

[hausdok]

A few years back, I had a house that had about 7 to 10 cats running around. They had one big litter box called the basement. The smell slapped you in the face when you opened the basement door. I put on my mask, walked to the bottom of the stairs and turned around and went back up. The only thing that would save this place was a match and a gallon of gas. I mean this place was a disaster. The garbage through out the building was knee high.

After everything we talked about and everything we've seen, my client still wanted the house. I directed him to a company that does crime scene clean up similar to this company http://www.acceleratedbioscenecleanup.c ... p#homicide

By far the worst house I've ever seen.

One of the houses my father bought for back taxes and eventually moved us into when I was growing up was like that.

The owner died in her sleep, left no family behind and owed a lot in back taxes. The town sold the house at auction and my father got it for about $6,000 with a half acre of land.

When we walked through it, there were narrow pathways through the stuff she'd hoarded and the upstairs bathroom had a couple of 2 by 10's nailed across the door where she'd kept two tiny yap dogs for years. The floor and bottom of the tub was covered with dried dog crap at least 8 inches thick.

The old man gutted the house. He backed a dump truck up to the window on one side and then literally shoveled everything into the truck, saving only what he was able to get a few bucks for at the local used furniture shop. Ten days after he'd closed, you could stand on the street and look clean through the open frame. The only thing he left in place was the plumbing, the floor platforms, the framing and the roof with covering.

Four and a half months later he moved us into it and got it appraised at $45,000. That was around 1970 - 71. No odor, but it was weird to sit there in what was essentially a new house and realize that just a few months before it had literally been a 2200 sf trash can.

This is that house today.

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ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike