Mystery Smell

The last couple of months we've noticed a weird smell in the office. I know, I know, dentists offices smell funny anyway, but this was different. Like, rotting fish different. It drove us crazy. It was intermittent, coming and going for no apparent reason. I turned the gas off, thinking that it was the culprit. No luck. We cleaned the suction several times. I climbed up in the attic and checked for moisture or anything like unto it. Ditto for the crawl space. Gradually we narrowed it down to one particular room. Still, we couldn't smell it all the time, and when we could, we couldn't figure out why. I thought I had it narrowed down to the chair but after I checked it out and ran it up and down several times we couldn't smell anything. Finally yesterday I thought to check the light. I opened the cover and there, resting on one of the metal sockets, was a wire nut. The halogen bulb gets very hot and the socket heats up as well. Well, the plastic wire nut was heating up and causing this horrific stench. When the light was off and the wire nut cooled down, the odor went away. The nut was a little burnt on the side that contacted the socket, but not melted or anything. I don't think we were about to burn the building down, but we were certainly stinking the place up!