Removing the stink from a barn?

[zmoz]

I've got a concrete "shop" building with a wood "barn" in the back. The barn appears to be made from piles of scrap wood and has lots of bare openings. The biggest problem is the humidity is staying around 88%!

My problem: It stinks in there! I call it a barn, but there's never been any animals in there, besides the meth addict that got dragged out by the police before I got there. It smells like there has though, like a combination of pee and mold.

The floor is gravel and dirt, right now I'm raking up all the gravel to put down a vapor barier and wash the meth out of it. *sigh* I'll add a few more inches of new gravel on top.

Do you think this should help significantly with the humidity and smell? It's not like the roof leaks, so the humidity is either coming from the floor or in with the air. Should I put a vapor barrier on the walls too? (currently just 2x4s and plywood) I'm going to try and close the place up as much as possible, but that will probably make the smell worse!

Aside from that, should I try and spray the whole place down with bleach? Any other tips for dealing with "old barn smell"?

 

[MikeD74T]

Contact an undertaker. They have a concentrate that you mix with water & spray with a garden sprayer. It is also used to deodorize garbage trucks. It will kill the smell in a couple of days. MikeD74T

 

[Treemonkey1000]

Some of the chemicals used in making that stuff are very toxic. You might want to be wearing a good respirator and surgical gloves around that stuff. A good misting of a bleach solution might work to sterilize the area's.

 

[Reg]

I use a VERY dilute bleach solution to sanitize and deodorize horse trailers.
It works very well, the only problem is that it degrades the rubber mats... EVENTUALLY.
Not something you would need to worry about.

I think you need to solve the humidity problem first, molds just THRIVE in dampness.
If it is coming UP from the ground then a vapor barrier would probably work, but it would be more effective to get that ground dried out by arranging water run-off.
Think through where rain water from the roof goes, there might be a really low cost and effective long term solution just there.

 

[ToadHill]

If you are going to add more gravel then what I'd do is spray the building down with a mild bleach solution, let it sit a couple of days, get several bags of charcoal run over it with something heavy and pulverize it and sprinkle it across the top of the old gravel then add the new stuff.

 

[Mike Costello]

Some of the chemicals used in making that stuff are very toxic. You might want to be wearing a good respirator and surgical gloves around that stuff. A good misting of a bleach solution might work to sterilize the area's.

If that barn was used to manufacture meth, you may have some serious contamination in the soil. Get the soil tested first for any residue and remove the contaminated soil as necessary. Believe me, you will be much better off to do it right rather than risk present and future health issues. Meth contamination is very serious. Mike.

 

[radioman]

I would dig on the roof drip side a few feet below ground outside to take a look at where the water table is. If you can dig to at least 3 feet and wait overnight when there is no rain in the forecast. take a good look at the water that seeped in over night. If the hole is full of 3 ft of water, you know you need to have REALLY good drainage with pipes and vapor barrier inside the barn.
If there is only few inches of water on bottom of hole you probably can get away with vapor barrier only. Just put down a good base of gravel and call it good. As others said, reroute the rain away from drip side of barn and look for possible slope for water running into the barn.

Spraying with bleach solution will help to kill bacteria causing smell, but time will only get rid of it for good. Do you have power in the barn? You need to have a constant flow of air in the barn and that will lower the surface moisture and that in turn will suck any underlying moisture to the surface.

 

[zmoz]

Some of the chemicals used in making that stuff are very toxic. You might want to be wearing a good respirator and surgical gloves around that stuff. A good misting of a bleach solution might work to sterilize the area's.

I don't think he was making anything, just using it, and stealing stuff to buy it. He left me a nice stack of metal freshly cut up and ready to sell to the scrapper - I wonder who's it was? He was actually living in this stinky barn though. I won't park my old Jeep in there without de-stinkifying it.

I would dig on the roof drip side a few feet below ground outside to take a look at where the water table is. If you can dig to at least 3 feet and wait overnight when there is no rain in the forecast. take a good look at the water that seeped in over night. If the hole is full of 3 ft of water, you know you need to have REALLY good drainage with pipes and vapor barrier inside the barn.

I'm not sure where the water table is, but I think it's pretty deep. My barn is literally 4' from the edge of a 50+ foot cliff with a creek at the bottom. That's where all my rainwater is directed. The 4' strip of land behind the barn is concrete, so I can't dig it, but it should be keeping the water out pretty well. But, the creek probably keeps the humidity pretty high.

Do you have power in the barn? You need to have a constant flow of air in the barn and that will lower the surface moisture and that in turn will suck any underlying moisture to the surface.

Yeah, right now I have a couple big 20" fans blowing around the room and then an old bathroom exhaust vent pumping air outside....

The floor of the barn slopes slightly towards the cliff, and I'll arrange the plastic so that it overlaps like a roof, and everything can run downhill and out. Hopefully the gravel on top will be level...

 

[zmoz]

If you are going to add more gravel then what I'd do is spray the building down with a mild bleach solution, let it sit a couple of days, get several bags of charcoal run over it with something heavy and pulverize it and sprinkle it across the top of the old gravel then add the new stuff.

I like that idea! Maybe even just a few bags of burquets spread around the place would help absorb moisture and smell?

I already had a little fire on the floor in the middle of the barn, to smoke the place out a little bit, don't know how effective that was but smoke smells better than pee. I noticed frogs and worms making a mass exodus...

 

[2manyrocks]

If there was meth in there, you could have a serious contamination problem. You'd better determine what is there before you mess around with it.