if by the looks of your layers you have no mucky layers leave it be lots of food in your bedding to last months if need be best advice in a bin that looks like that is to leave them - w/o any ammonia/sulfur type aroma yer ok you look to have lots of room between bins? i'd be tempted to consolidate - just make sure you have decent drainage to help move excess moisture into your catchment bin best advice i ever received - we can kill worms with food faster than neglect. you look to have lots of fine bedding. keep sure to allow sufficient drainage. worms will mediate themselves as long as they have a decent place to run to. you have lots of good leaf material. i'm trying the same this spring with lots of leafy type bedding. best advice i know - leave them be. interesting tid bit though - pnsb's photo synthetic non-sulfur bacteria thrive on damp leaves. i only dabble in 'em'. something to consider though if a fan of soil biology. my bookmarks are so disorganised http://sites.google.com/site/windintheroses/em so much stuff online the last few years

THANK YOU for posting this! I have a 7 year old Kenmore H3 pair and our towels have been smelling bad for the past few years. I thought I was just a laundry-idiot and would buy new towels every few months. I ALWAYS leave the door open, use a powder HE detergent and do not use fabric softner. Now our baby's bibs (terry cloth) are starting to smell sour and I have tried everything from bleach runs, to soaking them in baking soda to adding vinegar to the rinse. I have looked under the lip, and haven't seen mold, just what kind of ick you would expect after 7 years of washing our clothes. I am running a HOT Benefect load right now and will soak our towels and bibs in it tomorrow. If that doesn't work, I will have to get a new one with the fancy "clean tub" feature. I can't stand my baby smelling icky.

Please allow me to post my opinion and experience on this stinky issue. I am the owner of a HE3T washer, and I am really unhappy with it, mainly because of the smelly and moldy issue, that crept up on us unexpectedly. My wife and I have 4 kids, so doing laundry is a daily affair, and not to be underestimated or procrastinated either... I am on the verge of throwing that ugly beast out of the laundry room for good. It is unbearably revolting to pick up an (alleged) clean towel to dry one's face just out of the shower, and "smear" moldy smell all over you. The vomit factor is very high on this one.... :-( However, I want to highlight a point, and that this issue is NOT an issue with ALL the FL (front loader) washing machines in general. Maybe just US made ones... Overseas, ( Italy ) where I grew up, FL are 99.999999% of laundry machines available on the market and this issue is completely unknown. To put it simply, I am now 45 years of age, I have lived in Italy 28 of those years, and I have never, ever, seen or heard of moldy smell on clean laundry out of the washer. Never. If you knew my mother (she redefines the word "neat freak") you would understand. Just the hint of a remote possibility of having mold in the washer and/or laundry, would bring that washer in the front yard in flames... Seriously, I believe US manufacturers have gone wrong somewhere in the making of this machines. They either cut one too may corners ( quality of rubber, maybe ?) or are attempting to reduce the amount of water in the cycle at the point where the quality of the rinse cycle is not an issue with them, and us as consumers are not part of the equation. I just came back from a one year of living in Italy with wife and kids, and the FIRST thing we notice, ever single time we go over there, is how much fresher and overall incredibly better smell of "clean laundry" they have from their washers. I know, we are weird... and on the contrary, as soon as we are back to the US, and to our $#@! HE3T, we pick up the moldy smell again. The customer/user/consumer SHOULD NOT have to do any gimmicks or use any "special" tablets, in order to operate these washers, or any washer, for that matter, NOT A SINGLE ONE. This washers are NOT cheap and they should just... well, work. Living in Italy for the last 12 months, we used two washers, one that came with the apartment we rented, and besides a slower spin cycle, it worked as expected (put dirty clothes in, put detergent, push the button, wait, get wet CLEAN laundry out, END OF THE story. Then the landlord needed his washer back, and for a "rent discount" he took that one back, and I got my old 12 years old Miele washer out of storage. This Miele has a somewhat smaller load capacity than most, and it worked for a family of 6 for a long time. Same for my mother's Candy ( Italian brand), and my sister's old Italian washer (San Giorgio). That one lasted 16 years of day in and day out operation for a family of six. It is just so frustrating, since I know that as a concept, FL do work very well, I have seen it work for decades... and one more time, we should NOT need to use "tablets" or do complicated procedures to have clean and good smelling laundry. As I said before, millions of people overseas use FL day in and day out, without doing anything else other than 1) put dirty laundry in 2) select cycle 3) put detergent in 4) push button 5( get clean clothes out. End of the story. Kenmore, Sears, whatever, get your acts together !!

I know it may not seem systematic, but I've had my good friend who is a custom home builder out to the house 3 times. Like me, he's been unable to find anything with visual inspections of everything inside, outside, and in the attic. The mold remediation guy came on a day when the smell was strong and smelled it too, but there ended up being no mold detected even though he felt 'confident' there was a leak in the wall. The HVAC guy was a suggestion by the builder of this home. Even though the home was built 7 years ago, we remain friends and in touch so I reached out to him. He suggested the "dirty sock syndrome" even though I struggled with that explanation given the limited nature of the smell and it doesn't seem to emanate from any vents or HVAC equipment. I'm attaching pics of the gas line where it enters the house. I don't see any obvious issues but I'm not an expert. Do you have suggestions on who to call next? A plumber? Home inspector?