A friend bought a house, and only afterwards discovered that cats had been peeing heavily on the concrete floor of the basement. Very heavily. And of course it stinks. What would you do to remediate the smell?

I told her what I’d do, but also said I’d poll my fellow landlords.

I doubt anything short of sealing the concrete will work.

A Genius on this sight has said ya only get what ya allow.

Skunks cant smell there own holes.

I have to wonder if using baking soda and vinegar and making the basement into a large scale volcano experiment would work. I think you would have to cook it out if you can't seal it.

Learning,

I have used Neutrolene successfully with bad pet odors.

We had our personal freezer lose power while we were out of town. It was beyond nasty with all the rotted meat inside. We tried everything to remove the odor.

So I thought, what do they use in morgues to get rid of dead body smell?

Give it a good soak with veterinary kennel cleaner. K.O.E. is what it is called (kennel odor eliminator ). Enzyme cleaners have to be wet to work, so follow the directions. It looks expensive, but it is extremely concentrated, which brings the cost to use it way down.

It might take a repeat, but that should work. If not, then paint over the concrete to seal in the odor.

I used a pressure washer. Then I scrubbed with cleanser with bleach in it using a long handled scrub brush. Then I tried a vinegar solution to scrub it. After all these three treatments, whenever the weather was damp it still smelled like a pet shop.

I posted a similar situation about 2yrs ago. I can tell you from personal experience while some things may lighten the smell, nothing will eliminate it fully and I tried everything! Concrete is like a spong and the odor molecules are absorbed into it. In my case I had to jack hammer the area where the cats were. Re poured then sealed with a concrete sealer. I sued the tenant and won. I'll be receiving $10 / month until I leave this earth.