October 16, 2008 at 1:46 pm
#21736
imported_eileen
Participant
Me again.
If the smell is from dampness, dry the basement up.
A dehumidifier is not expensive. You have to empty it when it is full of water or it will stop running. The water is soft like rainwater and great for watering plants. We empty our dehumidifier into a watering can.
If the dampness is due to foundation problems, those need to be fixed. The ultimate solution is to dig all the way around the house and fill in with pea gravel next to the basement walls. That's not for the faint-hearted either; we got another estimate of $10,000 to shore up sagging basement walls and put the pea gravel all around the outer walls.