Dead rodents in heating ducts??

Suddenly my wife and I can smell a really putrid odor coming from one of the floor registers. Is it possible for a mouse or whatever to get into these vents?
I would assume they're all pretty much sealed up? I took the outside cover off the furnace but there's really nothing you can see, without pulling the whole unit out. Anyone else ever experience this??

If a rodent got into your basement area, it could have chewed it way into the duck. The ducks run under the rig inside the coroplast. You will have to drop the coroplast to get to the ducking and inspect it.

Years ago, I had a travel trailer I kept on my property in the woods. Always had a mouse problem (go figure!), when I'd go down there & need the furnace, there was a strange odor coming out of the vents. I finally gave in and replaced the ducting in the whole thing. Found several interesting things. Droppings, mouse skeletons with hide stretched over them, etc. There were places where they had chewed holes in the ducting. Even after I replaced the ducts, I still was getting some odd smells. Figured that the mice had gotten into the furnace and there was poop & pee in it also.

It is possible for them to chew a hole in the thin plastic heating ducts. But, I recently had a similar smell and thought it might be a dead/dying rodent down below. Turns out is was a small leak at the gas fitting to the furnace. Just enough to seep in and smell bad. Not quite like the mercaptan odor, but a sulfide like odor. If you have a small gas detector, check your ducts and gas fittings.

I use one like this, available from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Gas-Detector-By-TechTools/dp/B00628V0YO

JimHamlin said:

Suddenly my wife and I can smell a really putrid odor coming from one of the floor registers. Is it possible for a mouse or whatever to get into these vents?
I would assume they're all pretty much sealed up? I took the outside cover off the furnace but there's really nothing you can see, without pulling the whole unit out. Anyone else ever experience this??

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Thanks to ya'll who responded. Yesterday we "swept" the heat ducts running from the LR area to the kitchen and found nothing but dog hair (our Sonny's, a 110lb Lab). We used a plumber snake attached to an O'cedar mop head and dragged it from one floor register to another, two times per run. Our ducts are made of metal, not plastic, so no way a critter could chew his way thru. So that leaves the ducts going from the furnace to the two upper registers in the bedroom/bath area. Not sure how we'd "sweep" those ducts without the chance of getting the mop head stuck somewhere and not being able to recover it, so the puzzle will go unsolved for now. One area I haven't inspected is the plumbing area in the basement, which is separated from the rest of the basement by a 1/2 wall. Will do this if it ever stops raining where we are. For now, the wife has put drops of peppermint oil in the register where it smells the worst.
What's interesting is that for several weeks before the foul odor arrived, we had mouse droppings in the basement and kitchen cupboards near the floor. We tried all sorts of traps and was never able to catch the critter(s?). Well we stopped seeing the droppings about the same time the foul smells arrived, and we don't think that was a coincidence. Oh well, this certainly isn't the worst thing that could happen to full-timers!

Jim, those pesky little critters can get into just about anything they want.
I would suggest that you get to your furnace and pull the plenum and take a look in there.
I'm not so sure you have all metal duct work.

Peace
Dave

If you have a shop vac and a couple of lengths of vac hose try taping it together and fishing it down the heat duct, hopefully you can suck a carcass out if it's there. We had a dead one on the top of a kitchen cabinet that had us going nuts, my wife finally found it.
I also set a sticky trap ( snow-birding in Florida at the time) behind the storage wall and caught one that was driving us crazy last year. Figured out this year we had a opening at the bottom of the gasket on the kitchen slide-out, but I had them in the trailer. Now I'm trying to get the buggers out.

Westwind said:

If you have a shop vac and a couple of lengths of vac hose try taping it together and fishing it down the heat duct, hopefully you can suck a carcass out if it's there. We had a dead one on the top of a kitchen cabinet that had us going nuts, my wife finally found it.
I also set a sticky trap ( snow-birding in Florida at the time) behind the storage wall and caught one that was driving us crazy last year. Figured out this year we had a opening at the bottom of the gasket on the kitchen slide-out, but I had them in the trailer. Now I'm trying to get the buggers out.

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If it is mice, not rats, they hate and will not cross and run from peppermint. If you can stand strong peppermint smell, get peppermint oil. Put it in the basement and registers. If you want to get them and don't care alive or dead, sticky trap paper traps. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJE512...t=&hvlocphy=9032190&hvtargid=pla-312081200858 Place a very small drop of peanut butter in the center. Put this in behind the UDC qalong the wall area and anywhere else you think they are. Just drop in the trash.

First thing you need to do is cover, plug and block all openings in the frame and undercarriage.


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