My wife insists that when our bedroom/bathroom starts to have a sewer smell it can sometimes be alleviated by turning on the sink in the laundry room (on the other side of the house) to fill the p-trap with water. Could this possibly be true?
No other rooms in the house seem to get this smell (including the laundry room where the supposed dry p-trap is located).
All of the drains in our bathroom where the smell occurs are used regularly, so they can't be drying out.
Best Answer
I rather suspect that you have a venting problem that is periodically forcing air back through the p-trap in your master bath. A venting problem can also result in the water of a given trap being sucked into the drain line. When this happens you will get odors through that trap. The likelihood of the restoring of water in another trap in the house affecting the traps effectiveness in your bath is almost nonexistent.