What do you do about strong smelling urine?

How do you know that she has no UTI? Did she have a urinalysis. Often the elderly do not have any symptoms of a urinary tract infection what so ever until they end up septic in the emergency room. Also, a lot of times women colonize bacteria in their urine. It may not be an actual bladder infection but there can be a lot of bacteria just sloshing around in there. If she has not had a urinalysis to look for infection, ketones, blood, protein, etc you should bring her to her physician. If she does not have a physician, bring her to a local urgent care.

Last week we checked for leaking of the wax seal of the toilet. Things seem to be good. My mother does have a lot of accidents, so I suspected urine was going under the commode, since it wasn't caulked. It is now cleaned out and caulked. We have a new safety frame on the way, since the padded seat of hers smelled terrible. I thought it was residual. I did a black light test where I knew there was urine, but apparently human urine doesn't glow like cat urine does. It was yesterday after cleaning so thoroughly that I realized that it wasn't just leaking somewhere causing it. It was the fresh stuff was really strong smelling. I had read the things you wrote, blannie, and thought maybe it is stones, but she doesn't have any discomfort.

When I think of ammonia, I think of breakdown of protein. That gets my imagination working. I am hoping that drinking more water will help dilute the smell. She might be avoiding drinking much because of the accidents. Hard to know what is going on.

From webmd: "Urine normally doesn't have a very strong smell. If you get a whiff of something particularly pungent, you could have an infection or urinary stones, which can create an ammonia-like odor. Diabetics might notice that their urine smells sweet, because of excess sugar. In the past, doctors would actually taste urine for this sweetness to diagnose diabetes." Livestrong says that B vitamins can cause urine to smell, along with coffee, asparagus, alcohol and garlic. Does your mom eat/drink/take any of those?

Perhaps you could get a black light to see if there is any residue you cannot see causing the odor. I once had a problem with the seal on the toilet leaking and then urine seeping into the underlayment of the flooring. All the cleaning in the world would not get ride of it. That's a tricky one because you cannot see anything. Or does it only smell after she urinates?

Thank you, everyone. My mother doesn't drink enough water. Her urine looks clear enough -- no cloudiness I've ever noticed. I guess I was hoping for a magic ingredient in her food that would help freshen the smell. Water may be the only that helps.

Drink more water. My Dad's is strong too, and i leave glasses of water around everywhere he goes. It seems to help.

I vote for having your mother drink more water for awhile and see if that helps.

Don't know what you can add to the diet but maybe CarolLynn can help there.
Does she have liver failure? Is the urine very dark almost brown? is her skin yellow? check with her Dr anyway.
I see you are using vinegar to clean and keeping everything green. I am a great believer in a little bleach