Let's Play...WHATS THAT STINK?

As most of you know I make my email address (faucetman886@gmail.com) available to anyone that reads my blog, published articles or comments on discussion rooms and forums. Why? Because I do this to help folks and to learn. With my email address available to anyone I get some interesting feedback as well as direct questions from readers.
With the popularity of my “what’s that smell?” blogs (there are at least four in circulation) they seem to evoke the most comments and questions such as the one below that I got this week:
Q: ”I have that stinky problem you were describing. It's in all of the bathrooms, the laundry room and the kitchen. To me it smells like a wet, soiled rag has been sitting around in each of those rooms for a week. Our house is only 12 years old. We tend to have problems with our washer. It's a High Efficiency, but every once in a while when I start a load, I come back in an hour and it hasn't even squirted water into the machine. It seems to have done everything else, but no water. It also does this thing where it says it's too sudsy, so it just sits there and doesn't rinse and drain. Now, I don't know if this has anything to do with our stink problem, but I figure I better give you as much info. as possible. Also, we're on City sewer. In your article you explained that it may have something to do with the "p" pipe not being filled with water. Do I need to go around and open every pipe up in the house? And how do I do that? Especially the pipe behind the washer, because I think ours is probably behind the wall too.”
A: “Probably not a "p" trap problem, that tends to be localized. Just a guess could be either your water heater or if you are on a well your well could be contaminated with a iron bacteria that makes the water smell and thickens the water. This would cause your washing machine to malfunction as you describe have you noticed a black or grayish tinge to your water or white clothes or blackish stains in your toilets or sinks? If so that could be the problem and you would need to decontaminate the well with a chemical treatment.
More than likely though is the water heater. After about 8 years +/- the anodes in the water heater. These are aluminum and are made to attract iron particles and slowly disintegrate and produce iron sulfate in your hot water. This then causes your hot water to have a sulfur like smell. In either case the hot water heater needs to be drained and cleaned out and the anodes replaced. If the well is the problem you would have to decontaminate the hot water heater of the black fungus through basically the same procedure. If the hot water heater has sludge in it the water would smell and it would also cause the problem with your washer because of the sludge in suspension in your water.
Start by running a sink of all hot water and see if it smells badly. Then do the same with just cold water. If the hot water is the only thing that smells then it’s probably just the HWH. If the cold water smells also then you have a supply problem. I hope this helps and please let me know the outcome.”