Ammonia smell in nappies - HELP!
I wonder if anyone has some good advice for me... I have been using cloth nappies for my little boy for nearly a year now and love them! We use a combination of onelifes, fuzzi bunz with cotton prefold inserts and cotton tots bots. The problem we are recently having is that they are smelling of ammonia. Usually I wash my nappies as follows: dry pail / cold watwer rinse / 60 degree wash with third usual amount of ecover plus nappy fresh. Recently I tried putting a little baking soda in the first rinse and a little white vinegar in the final rinse. This seems to have helped a bit.. I can't smell the nappies through his clothes now but they still stink when I'm changing him. I'm desperate to sort this problem though as I know quite a few people who refuse to use cloth nappies because they think they smell. We didn't used to have this problem so I really don't want my little boy to be a bad show-case!!
Any comments appreciated, thank you!!
Hi - I never had this problem during the day but i did overnight. You could smell the nappy when you went into the room in the morning - really horrible. What I found helped was to soak my overnight nappies in plain cold water until I was ready to do a wash. Also i think they can just go through stages where their pee is stronger than normal - some people think there is a connection to teething but I'm not sure. I know it would be a hassle but you could try soaking all of your nappies instead of dry pailing for the next few washes. It might just help any stubborn smells to soak out of the fibres.
Hope this helps
Jennifer.
Thank you, I will try this! My mum has never understood the dry pailing method so perhaps she is rught after all?! She also suggested doing one wash in biological washing powder thinking perhaps they're not being cleaned deeply enough. Again I may try this. Will try anything at this point!
Hey Holly, I've got this too. Haven't done the vinegar yet but was going to this weekend but have done the bio one.... did work for quite a while. Mind are about 3yrs old now so I think it's just a massive build up. I may go all out this weekend.... soak them over night, wash them in bio with a drop of vinegar, cold wash them and non-bio wash after!! Alot of washing but may just work!!
Well, I have now tried vinegar in the wash, nothing in the wash at all and washing the nappies in bio washing powder but we still have the same probelml! I've got a feeling that my washing machine is just a bit too efficient and doesn't use enough water to rinse out all the detergent or urine or whatever it is that's smelling. Am a bit down-hearted to be honest!
Hi Holly
If you are going to try to soak them it may well be worth adding a spoon of bicarbonate of soda. It is really great for getting rid of unwanted smells, I use it on loads of things and has always worked so far!
Hope that the advice works, good luck.
Laurax
I would wash them with soda crystals (washing powder isle in supermarkets) - cheap to do - to strip wash them and get rid of detergent build up and then start using eco balls to avoid it happening again. www.mamigreen.co.uk sells them and the refills at a good price.
It is likely to be caused by a build up of laundry detergent in your nappies. Wash them as usual but without any laundry detergent at all. If you see any suds in the water then your washing machine is removing a build up of detergent. You may need to run them through more than once without detergent to remove all build up.
When you are washing the nappies normally try to make sure that you use no more than half to two-thirds of the normal manufacturers recommended dosage of detergent. There is always the temptation to use more than recommended since the nappies get so dirty but actually the fabric is so absorbent that it absorbs the soapy water very quickly and then our washing machines have to work very hard to remove it again.
Let us know how you get on.
