Help Please!!!

abby8279

I know this board has had a lot of cleaning questions lately but I am in desperate need of help!!!  Here's my situation in the briefest way possible:  I use cotton prefolds.  I have a HE FL with hardish water.  I have been doing: cold rinse, warm normal wash with 2 scoops of classic Rock N Green, and extra cold rinse.  Lately I have noticed the slightest ammonia smell when the dipes are peed on.  

So what I did next is: warm rinse, hot heavy duty wash with just under the 1 of Tide HE powder, extra rinse.  Then I pulled my covers out and: a hot heavy duty wash with 1/4 c bleach and and extra rinse.  I thought both switching to Tide and doing a bleach strip would take care of everything...wrong!  My odor issues got 100 times worse!  Now when DD pees it is the strongest worse pee/perfume combination I have ever smelled!  

So then my third step was: 2 hot water heavy duty cycles with no detergent, 1 hot water heavy duty cycle with Rock N Green, and an extra rinse.  And the odor is still there.  I have been adding extra water to each cycle since I have an HE.  And I have been rinsing all my dipes.  Please help with suggestions on my stink issue!!!

TJ1979

When you did your two detergent free rinse cycles, were there bubbles?

abby8279

TJ1979 said:

When you did your two detergent free rinse cycles, were there bubbles?

No, I did not see any bubbles.

Rrrrrachel

Even though we don't have super hard water at all I noticed a big difference when we started using a hard water booster. Have you tried hard rock or whatever their hard water detergent is?

Rrrrrachel

And I think those initial two heavy duty cycles are over kill. If you have hard water they may even be making things worse.

Danie007

I wouldn't use rocking green. Even their hard rock version for hard water. I believe they switch the formulas, and lots of people are having problems with RnG. I would try doing a hot water strip, and switching detergents. You may want to try adding a water softener like pp suggested.

CLLDLL

I agree with both switching detergent and adding in a water softener like Calgon.  

This smell you are getting when she pees, is it really ammonia, or could it be barnyard instead?  We had what I thought was ammonia when DS2 peed, but it was actually more of a fishy, wetdog smell than a chemically ammonia smell.  Turned out we weren't getting the diapers clean and needed to switch detergent and use Calgon.  Also for us using a warm pre-rinse instead of cold made things worse.