I pulled the filter and checked mine last night. There is water like yours and there was some small bits of food particles. Did not smell. Although It finished running a load about 18hrs before. I can't test the two day thing since it pretty much always has dirty dishes in it. When there is dirty dishes in it obviously will have an odor that will build over time. I scrape but do not rinse my stuff. Wasn't as hard to break the habit that we had with rinsing the dishes since we were without a DW and sink for like 8 months for my remodel so it was like starting over :). I just started using the DW a few weeks ago. I have started using Miele Tabs and using 1/2. No rinse aid or salt. I have a whole house water softener and I just tested the water again and its at like 2 grains vs 28 without the softner. Kas, You use Tabs and rinse aid. I thought based on the directions that rinse aid should not be used with Tab detergents? I set the unit to not dispense any rinseaid. I do get white spots on silverware, plastic and glasses. Not sure I should add rinse aid.

This is an old thread, but my first thought would be the paint. I have this problem...though half my house unfortunately...culprit was the paint according to the paint manufacturer. Oil primer and repainting helped for a couple weeks, then the smell returned. It's scary to think this could go on for years. I've seen other posters on this board solve the problem by repriming with BIN (shellac-based primer) and repainting again.

The smell is hard to describe. Kinda like a bad primer smell mixed in with insulation and damp.. Hard to pinpoint. Not a musty moldy smell because I know what that is and EVERYTHING in this house is new. There is a vapor barrier under the concrete, I know because I cut through to add to the plumbing. I did put plastic down again and new concrete over. The concrete floor was painted with Zissner's sealer as well as all the wood floors prior to carpet. I thought it could be coming from the ground even through everything is foam sealed - but can't get every square inch. Having said that, just last week I added to gable vents at the peak of the front part of the house and I have noticed a change in smell. I think the insulation smell is gone. I believe the attic got so hot it began to come in around the recessed lights and other fixtures. Stupid contractor sided over the old gable vents. So when I walked into the house the other day when I arrived here, it smelled like dampness- water basically - 60% humidity. If I run the dehumidifier it seems to go away. This house is in a forrest although I had all my trees removed there are plenty of others. So dampness, rotting tree roots, leaves, etc is present all the time. I'm also a few miles from the ocean and the ground is basically sand. Tough to paint the real picture but I was just commenting because it is frustrating when you renovate an entire house and still get a sniff of something not right.

Thanks, bpChill -- you are correct, and it was good to have the furnace examined and cleaned up (the duct cleaning workers removed and cleaned the large fan box). However, the odor problem remained -- until I decided to spend most of the next day crawling around down there and checking everything out a lot closer. With the furnace running, I noticed that a large section of old fiberglass insulation was billowing out with hot air blowing from behind it. Upon close examination, I discovered that the original installers had left a 5" x 8" gap in the sheet metal case that comprises the blower box, and had apparently tried to cover it with foil-covered tape that had long since torn away. This was why the crawl space was always so warm when the furnace operated -- I was losing hot air into it!!!! I fastened down the sheet metal with screws, bought a small piece of sheet metal and screwed it down over the gap, installed new foil-covered (code) duct tape over all the gaps and wrapped the top of the furnace with a new bat of foil-covered fiberglass insulation. It was while doing this that I pushed up the wide, flexible ducting from the main house air intake where it entered the bottom of the furnace -- and saw a rat tail protruding from the narrow gap between the bottom of the sheet metal air intake box and the concrete pad on which the whole heater sat. The dead rat attached to the tail had apparently crawled in there, got stuck and died, perhaps a week ago. And jeez, did it stink!! Now the source of the odor was found; I disposed of the rat and scraped and vacuumed away the adherent material from it on the concrete, vacuumed up the remaining rat droppings on and around the pad and the old insulation, and pulled out and and disposed of the old, torn insulation. Within a few hours, the odor from the air intakes inside the house was gone. Success! The moral of the story is, if you smell what seems like a dead animal, it certainly IS a dead animal. One thing, though that concerns me about the furnace -- I've read that the electronic igniters (carbide or nitride)on these furnaces are supposed to last maybe 5 years. Mine is still going strong after 15!