If you have multiple sumps, you've got a lot of water pressure pushing through the concrete. You need to seal the walls and floor. Humidifiers won't do it, only after you seal should you see what the humidity goes down to, and get a suitable unit.

Is the basement unfinished? I hope so. You need something like this:

https://www.radonseal.com/radonseal-mitigation.htm

There are other methods as well, but ideally your basement is unfinished.

Once complete, I recommend looking for a real dehumidifier, like one of these:

https://www.sylvane.com/santa-...70-dehumidifier.html

Dehumidifiers that can handle a decent volume efficiently, aren't cheap. But, your basement once sealed, may get by with less dehumidifier.

You also need to look at any windows, doors, other penetrations, and the rim joist/mud sill.

Short term, put a few pie tins with coffee grounds in them around the basement.
Coffee grounds do a pretty good job of absorbing/neutralizing odors.
Oh, and you might consider a dehumidifier to get the moisture out...

+1 on dehumidifying and sealing. We have also run an Ozone generator with success - you just need to keep out living things that you want to remain living while the machine runs - generally an hour or so, then allowing to dissipate for several hours. Gets rid of almost any odor, and can be run several times if necessary.

quote:

Oh, and you might consider a dehumidifier to get the moisture out...

^^^^
I enjoyed that remark. LOL

Thanks for the suggestions men. DeHumidifier on the shopping at. Ionizer next if that doesn’t work. The basement has epoxy on the finished side. Plain concrete on the storage side.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Not mad. Just irritated at redundancy and laziness in reading previous posts. Just repeat your meme five or six times for me. Not all of us have dementia. {Joking}.

Some of us are surrounded by others who do not listen. If I am mad you will know.

Have you considered a dehumidifier for your dementia?

In the meantime, try a couple of gallon tubs of Damp Rid.

You can get it at Lowes - or, on line.

We used two in a high humidity large garage.

Used the unscented version and it did wonders pretty quickly.

Think giant tub of desiccant. You just remove the plastic cover and it starts working.
Less than 12 bucks for a 64 oz. tub.

Don’t bother with damp rid. It’s expensive and a real dehumidifier will remove twenty five times as much water per day as damp rid will.

+1 what arc said ^^^^ Fix the water intrusion issue.

In addition to the stuff mentioned above, I found that scrubbing the walls of the sump pits removed a lot of the smell. This sounds crazy, but I also had a dead animal stuck in a downspout. When the AC ran, the stink mostly went away. When it was not, the stench seemed to come thru the basement walls.

Have had great luck with an Ozone Generator in our apartments after they are left stinky, just follow the directions.

Have also used it successfully in getting rid of kitchen odors in our own house quick. Run it for an hour, then open the windows and air out for a bit.

After Katrina, some businesses had success with companies that dehumidified buidings. It was quite impressive to watch as there were large hoses in every opening and a machine that ran for several days. Probably not applicable in your situation but it heated and dried pretty much everything. Minimal gutting was required. It minimized the gutting. Heat and an industrial dehimidifer did the trick.

quote:

Originally posted by arlen:
How to rid the basement of odor? Trap the skunk and let him go five miles from the house.

This skunk won't go down that easy, traps been there for a week. The skunk thinks the porch is a motel 6. Comes and goes at odd times, ignores the trap, occasionally sprays the dogs down. I'd rather have a wet basement. BTW, my Delonghi dehumdifyer has been working hard day and night for over 10 years. Love that thing. It was the smallest one made at the time, and has been discontinued.

OP, any updates? Were you able to get the temp and relative humidity readings for your basement? If you can go further, what's the temperature of the concrete slab? Seeing this thread bumped has me leaning towards another source of your musty smell. I suspect you already have a dehumidifier in your basement and that is your concrete slab. Its temperature may be cool enough that it's reaching the dew point and causing condensation, however small.

As for ozone, it has shown success in killing mold, but it does not remove spores. Spores can become active down the road in the right environment. Ozone actually works by breaking down O2 and creating O3 (ozone). In short, it reduces the level of oxygen within building, hence it not being safe for living things. For those that use Ozone machines, certainly be careful, especially in apartment complexes. O3 is heavier than O2 and it will sink. If an apartment is below the one being Ozoned, it may very well find its way to the lower unit and cause problems for living things in that unit. Ozone works best with heat as well, set the unit near the cold air return, turn the heat up and let it work. The heat causes the pores of the materials to open and release odors.

The dehumidifier is the only thing you can do that's relatively cheap.
The real problem is getting the water from outside the foundation. Unfortunately that should have been done better when the home was originally built and the only way I know is to dig down outside to floor level and put in a proper drainage system.
Another thing to look at is making sure the downspouts have hoses to get the water away from the house and the grading next to the foundation slopes away too.
Without dealing with the water pressure behind the foundation, everything else is a patch.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
After Katrina, some businesses had success with companies that dehumidified buidings. It was quite impressive to watch as there were large hoses in every opening and a machine that ran for several days. Probably not applicable in your situation but it heated and dried pretty much everything. Minimal gutting was required. It minimized the gutting. Heat and an industrial dehimidifer did the trick.

I believer you're describing desiccant dehumidifiers. They certainly work and while they make smaller versions, they would be overkill for the OP. A large (several thousand CFM desiccant) would cause severe damage to a normal house if left running for long enough. I've had temps of 120 degrees with less than 2% relative humidity coming out of them before. In a normal size home cabinets and furniture would start to split before long. Always wanted to set one up and do that for documentation purposes/training material, maybe one day...

Well men, I picked up dehumidifier. Within 24 hours it dropped the basement odor down to nearly unnoticeable. The humidity meter didn’t even have time to get a stable reading. Great!! My next move is to paint the bare side with Radonseal like Arc suggested. Thanks men. I knew ya would come through!