Claire Reid
A woman has issued an urgent warning after discovering the ‘terrifying’ reason her bedroom began to smell strongly of fish.
Claudia Anderson, 26, said that her bedroom developed an odd fishy odour that hung around ‘for weeks’.
Initially, Claudia said she and her husband were simply ‘a bit embarrassed’ by the smell, but as time went on she became determined to find the cause.
In a clip on TikTok, Claudia - who posts under @mrsclaudiaanderson - said: "Here's something I didn't know about a potential electrical fire hazard until it happened to me.
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"Now, for a few weeks, me and my husband were walking into our bedroom and thinking, 'oh my God, it stinks of fish in our bedroom.'
"We didn't want to tell anyone about it because you're a bit embarrassed."
Claudia says she and her husband decided that smell must be coming from their en-suite bathroom and set about doing a deep clean in the hopes of eradicating the scent.
"So we took out the U bend from the sink, made sure the toilet was super clean, cleaned the plug hole in the shower… everything,” she said. “But the smell still lingered.”
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With her scrubbing efforts yielding no results, Claudia took to Google for answers and was shocked to discover that the smell could be caused by a serious electrical problem.
"I literally would never, ever have guessed that that is what that is...ever," she says.
"So I messaged my brother-in-law who's an electrician, and he said, 'yeah, that's probably something you should get checked out.'
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"So I called my father-in-law, who also used to be an electrician, and he came around this morning and had a look."
The camera then shows Claudia pointing to the fuse box, as she explains: "This is attached to our en-suite and there's our bedroom.
"So every time we walked in here, we were like, 'this smells like fish,' but it's actually this.
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"There was a wire that had become disconnected, and I don't know if you can see but it was actually melting the plastic on the inside of the socket.
"Look at that. That is terrifying!
"We were so, so lucky that we caught it before that burst into flames."
Claudia then urged people not to ignore any fishy smells in their homes and to call out an electrician as soon as possible.
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Her post has since gone viral with many people taking to the comments to thank Claudia for the tip.
One follower wrote: “Thank you for sharing with us, you might save a life through this.”
Someone else said: “So lucky thanks for the reminder.”
While a third commented: “Lucky you! I’ve made a mental note that fishy [smell] might mean electrical. So thanks for that.”