[TheForge] Follow up to "Need help with a mystery odor in my house"

[jerry Frost]

I believe that is a good working hypotheses Bruce. There's a chance the odor
has been accumulating so gradually over however long it's been since you
started using this particular oil, it was just a familiar background odor.
Then one day the motor may have run for an unusually prolonged period as you
surmise. Air circulation or perhaps you opened a basement door and you got a
stronger than usual whiff. An unrecognized potential danger tends to pin
itself to our consciousness, it's how we survive in a dangerous world.
Following this logic, your brain is now performing "olfactory recruiting"
devoting more of itself, even drawing other centers into finding and
identifying a potential danger. It tends to super sensitize you to a
particular stimulus. I developed auditory recruiting in my left ear do
compensate for diminished hearing due to nerve damage from the head injury. 

A severe experience, say being attacked by a pack of dogs or shot at by
gangsters will burn new neural pathways bypassing some of the evaluation
centers straight through the amygdala to the: flight, fight, freeze
reflexes.  This has a large part in PTSD, repeated extreme danger can make
these things so far as known permanent and debilitating.

As a test try adding a drop of Marvel Mystery Oil next time you oil the
pump/motor. It has a strong Wintergreen scent and should provide evidence
for or against your hypothesis. If you or yours don't like Wintergreen do
NOT use it, it could become unpleasant. Though not dangerous unless someone
is allergic of course.

Frosty

-----Original Message-----
From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bruce .
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2020 2:45 PM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: [TheForge] Follow up to "Need help with a mystery odor in my house"

Thanks for all your help.  The problem isn't *solved, *exactly, but the odor
has abated.

I'm reasonably sure the odor *was* due to an overheated motor bearing in the
boiler pump.  The difficulty with that explanation, and the reasons I didn't
latch onto it immediately, were that (a) it hasn't been very cold here, so
the boiler shouldn't have been *running* all *that *much, and (b) the odor
didn't *seem* to originate very close to the boiler.

Arguments in favor of this explanation are (a) the *only* motor in the
basement (and the odor certainly originated *somewhere *in th basement) that
runs unattended* is* the boiler pump, and (b) this is a motor I need, and
do, oil monthly, and most persuasively, (c) on some cold winter mornings,
when the heat has been on for prolonged periods, I occasionally get a "hot
oil" smell in the laundry room, where the boiler is located.

Were that "hot oil" smell exactly what I experienced yesterday as the "oily"
smell, I would have zeroed in immediately on the boiler motor, but it did
not strike me as quite the same, and the location seemed different.
My tentative conclusion is that sometime the previous night, the temperature
in the house may have dropped more than I would have expected, the boiler
came on for an unexpectedly long period, producing the unusual "hot oil"
smell, and that oily smell -- for reasons yet unexplained, and contrary to
all previous experience -- diffused through the basement and back hall.

That's the best explanation I can come up with.  After ventilating the house
overnight with the heat off (like I say, it's been relatively warm
here) the smell was almost completely gone and so far has not returned.
(Prior to that it had been quite pervasive -- worrisomely so.)  I've closed
up the house again and turned the heat back on, so we shall see what we
shall see.  So far, so good.

Thanks again.  I really felt I was in over my head on this one after my
hunting for the source of the odor went unrewarded.

Once again, I'm glad I am part of this community.  It's easier to socially
isolate when one has communities like this to fall back on.  (And if you
think I'm overreacting to the crisis by self-isolating -- take a look at a
map of the USA with the per capita COVID-19 cases indicated by color -- NJ
is right up there with NYC!)

Be careful and take care of yourself and yours,

Bruce
NJ