Joseph3l

Guys sorry I haven't responded, I've been attacking that room and applying the science in doing so. In the mean time, i see some tension in this forum post ! between some members so i hope for what its worth, you guys can make up and be happy ! I am happy to announce I have GOT RID OF THE SMELL ! 😁 @studiot@John Cuthber Make up you two !!!! Thanks to both of your logics and help in addition to research I dissipated the smell thank you both.. Also thanks to @StringJunky and @iNow for the solutions and helpful advice you guys ! 🙏 What I did : I sealed the room to reach high temperature with a portable oil heater, once that reached to high temps, turned on fan and opened the window in that room and opened the sealed zipped plastic door a little bit to all for a negative pressure. Both heater and fan were on smart switches that i set to schedule through out the day for safety reasons. This method dissipated the smell a little bit, though improved over the 2 days. I Followed this by washing the wall down with a fatty acid degreaser cleaner (Research indicates using fatty acids to break down such hydrocarbons on molecular level) Which seemed to do the job! I left that on over night. Sealed the room up. In the morning, the room smelled like strong soap ! 😂 followed by cracked white patches everywhere (Indication the degreaser broke the hydrocarbon) Then washed the walls down with distilled vinegar and water. The smell was gone. I continued with ventilating the room for extra day just to further refresh the room. Happy days Guys, many heads better than 1 ! I will now continue, to batten the walls, insulate between battens, vapor barrier on top, followed by aqua boarding, tanking and tiling etc.... Problem Solved 😁Thank you 🙏

@John CuthberThanks so much John, I have done exactly that, i have noticed that the smell is not as strong as it was a couple of hours ago, so as time passes hopefully the odor will dissipate. Thanks for clarifying the soda and vinegar remedy. Following on from that, to my understanding and please correct me if I'm wrong, but if i was to use a product that metabolizes the gasoline (eats it) such as degreaser which has fatty acids or a microbial oil degreasing cleaner to use, would that help the problem in a sense that it will eliminate the source of the problem at the molecular level? in addition to taking yours and others advice to air the room which I am already doing. If that wont work, could you possibly tell me why that is? just for educational purposes, i feel like this DIY nightmare has put me in school again for chemistry haha. Honestly i am great appreciative for all your advice.

Thanks so much for your response, there's only 1 window, so should I open this fully, direct the fan on it. But have the mini heater away from it. Sadly there's 3 walls affected so, I can centralize the heater between those. As for the cracking door. There's no door as I was renovating the room but instead i put up zipped plastic dust proof door which is zipped up and contained the smell. But should i open this slightly. << Assuming this all correct, how long based on your own experience do you anticipate the smell to last/eventually go away, the room is a square 3m ( 2 walls) x 2.5m (2 walls) so its relatively small box room. I was thinking of possible mixing baking soda and distilled white vinegar using hot water, and wipe this mixture on walls ? your thoughts on that as i read these can be oil eating microbes to remove the odor? and maybe water based oven degreaser. Your thoughts ? Thank you so much for your response.

Hi all, this probably wont be your average post. But i am severely struggling to get my head around this issue that has arised in my home. My plumber decided to seal my walls for my wet room renovation with a Bitumen liquid to keep damp away from the external brick wall coming in. The funny thing is, i never suffered from damp. He used a product designed for roofing inside my home. Safely to say, he has now left and no longer doing anymore work in my home. Consequently the product he has used contains Bitumen and is white spirit based. The ingredients are BITUMEN (WHEN IN SOLVENT SOLUTION) (95% carbon and hydrogen (± 87% carbon and ± 8% hydrogen) 50-70% EINECS: 265-196-4 CAS: 64742-93-4 [Xn] R40; [-] R10 • WHITE SPIRITS, NAPTHA (PETROLEUM) containing NAPTHA (gasoline (octane) and (kerosene, (Paraffin). Most of the chemical structures of this product is odorless to my understanding, except from the Gasoline Octane. My home smells of solvent/petrol and i am trying everything i can to stop this smell. It has been 4 days, I have tried baking soda bowels around the home, white distilled vinegar, coal, and opened windows to air the room. The only thing that kind of works is sealing off the room with plastic, but that only contains the smell in that room. I am at a loss on what to do as this stuff is stuck to my wall. To the touch it is dry. I also contacted the chemist of the company who creates the product they were shocked this was used indoors but only advised that the room needs to be heated up using sealed portable radiator without open flame, and use a extractor or fan to blow out the odor through the open window in that room. I have done that but found this has not helped as much, i understand that heating the room may evaporate the solvent to stop the smell, but then having a fan on at the same time blows the heat away reducing the effects of evaporation. I don't really know guys and I'm at a loss on what to do, is there anything i could spray to neutralize/destroy the solvent octane compound or apply a vapor or plastic sheeting sealed, which will contain the odor from releasing? I don't know, hoping anyone could help me, i know this is technically a DIY issue, but i need the science here to help me eradicate this odor issue caused by this NAPTHA (PETROLEUM) picture of the room is below and the ingredients of the product and link : https://www.everbuild.co.uk/product/902-bitumen-flashing-primer/]https://www.everbuild.co.uk/product/902-bitumen-flashing-primer/ Thank you to all.