Cigarette smell from our semi-detached neighbor is seeping in

[Scratchy]

Can you buy the neighbor out?

The suggestion of selling is problematic because OP may need to disclose the smoking issue to potential buyers. Anyway, OP has stated they do not want to sell. So, this is a good creative suggestion. That is assuming you will be able to get rid of the current tenants once you own the property.

 

[kgtest]

Help the smoker's find a better/cheaper place to live so they move? That is my suggestion.

 

[kgtest]

Also, landlords typically do not want to deal with smoke damage, or smokers. I had to and it sucked. Get video proof of the damage caused, the butts, the smoke in the air etc etc. Then once the landlord goes into the place, which he has the right to, and he sees and smells himself, he should have the right to evict or raise rents for the extra damage. You need to help the landlord and the tenants both see that moving is there best option.

 

[tmm99]

Can you buy the neighbor out?

LOL, if we had that kind of money, we would have bought a single detached house instead of semi-detached.

 

[tmm99]

Glad you got some relief.
I think you should send the landlord another email to thank him and let him know the problem is much better but not 100% resolved.

I would continue testing for air leaks and not wait for the smell to become obnoxious again.

Jazz and Jerry,

I did send an email to the landlord a few days later, to thank him and let him know the cig smell had subsided by 99% with an occasional cig smell late at night for a short time. I never receive any response on my "it's better now" emails, but I'm OK with that.

I'm quite certain he hates having smokers in his house because when I initially talked to him, he said that his tenants were non-smokers, and I think he was counting on them being non-smokers. I will keep on reporting to him if the smell comes back. Because he doesn't reply to me or disclose anything to me, I'm not sure if he gave the tenants a verbal warning or written warning, or he told them they had to move out, or none of the above, but at least, the landlord is receptive to what I report to him, so I'm good with that.

 

[tmm99]

It's sounding like this was correct. They probably stopped smoking, at least at home, for a while, and then started up. Now they've stopped again. Hopefully not just temporarily. I doubt you had a temporary condition with wind currents or anything like that unless it coincided when the furnace started being used. But you smelled it in Oct and not in Nov and Dec, and I assume the furnace was running there in Ottawa then.

This is the second time we're dealing with the cig smell inside our house.
I highly, highly doubt they ever quit smoking. Quitting smoking isn't like quitting eating starchy carbs. Quitting smoking is a very difficult thing to do and two smokers going cold turkey at the same time for three months is highly unlikely. I smelled the cig smell on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day and then the smell restarted on Jan 1, and continued until the landlord paid them a visit. DH and my theory - they gave themselves a special present - smoking inside the house during the holiday, and when nobody showed up to complain, they said, f*ck it, we're gonna start smoking inside the house again, like every day!

Right now, I fully believe that the smell was coming solely from the inside of the house. Nothing to do with the air current outside, as you said. After experiencing two very clear-cut changes in the smoke smell inside our house after the landlord paying them a visit, I am 100% convinced the smoke was coming through the common wall. (I'm ruling out the attic since we detected absolutely no cig smell in our attic.) It's true, I cannot smell any food smell coming in from the other side of the house, but maybe the kitchen is far from the common wall and that may be the reason. I did smell some kind of minty air neutralizer kind of smell coming through about the time the landlord told us he would pay them a visit.

 

[tmm99]

And oh! I wanted to mention, I talked to the people who installed our furnace, and the tech guy there said the cig smell that may come in via intake pipe to the furnace will not be detected inside the house because that is used for the combustion air only. Don't ask me to explain the mechanism cuz I don't know, but we're removing the shielding material on one side of the intake pipe we have placed as an experiment.

 

[tmm99]

I'm sorry I didn't respond to your post earlier, but I see you found a solution for the time being.

My point was that if your neighbor had contaminated air pushed into the attic, it would be pushed to the path of least resistance. Sometimes, outside weather may be eclipsed by your furnace fan, pulling from the easiest place (i.e. your attic with contaminated air). Air, like a lot of things, is lazy.

The closed air systems have a separate intake for combustion system/ exhaust system. When the furnace fan runs, it pulls again from the easiest place, maybe the bath vent, maybe a window, maybe nowhere. The use of an incense stick was good, I never though of them as I don't use them.

Your covers for the return vents may be uncontrollable, or they may have a lever to control the amount of air that enters them. My house has 2 cold air returns in each room, the upper one gets opened/bottom gets closed in the summer time to allow room to "fill up" with cold air and push warmer air out the top. Vice verso in winter as room "fills up" with warm air, the colder air gets sucked out bottom return. You can purchase the registers online or at one of the box stores, just measure the size of your duct beforehand.

When we first moved into our house in '91, it had ivory carpet throughout. We noticed after the winter season that on the first floor, around the baseboard, that the carpet was acting like a mini-filter and was awfully dirty. Here, the return air was getting sucked through the carpet to the cold air returns. It took some duct tape and caulk to insure the return registers were the only source for the system.

Another way to determine if your system is balanced, is if you hear your ducts bang or clang when the fan comes on, it's telling you it's sucking pretty hard on that section and needs some relief.

Thank you for the explanation of the closed system. We do have a closed system (intake and exhaust).

I'm not sure if the incense was a good idea. It smoked up our place, and it smelled pretty bad. It wasn't as bad as the cig smell, but its fake sandalwood smell lingered for days, mixed in with a forest fire kind of smell from lighting matches!

We don't have enough returns in our house to be able to do much with them, so I imagine there's no easy way to increase positive air pressure in our house besides opening the windows? (not practical in the cold winter months...)

 

[samclem]

We don't have enough returns in our house to be able to do much with them, so I imagine there's no easy way to increase positive air pressure in our house besides opening the windows? (not practical in the cold winter months...)

Unfortunately, there are plenty of ways to depressurize your house. Any time you run the clothes dryer or the bathroom fan it depressurizes your building envelope. Likewise with kitchen fans that vent outside and combustion appliances with a conventional flue. And then there is "stack effect" as warm are moves upward in the home and eventually some leaves through cracks, etc. So, most homes are at negative pressure when compared to the outside. The "approved" answer is to install a heat recovery ventilator that brings in outside air with a fan, and inside air is allowed to leave, but as it does so it exchanges heat with that incoming air so that energy loss is reduced (not eliminated). With the controls on these, you may achieve a small amount of positive pressure inside, which would probably stop the neighbor's smoke from coming in. Positive pressure is probably too much to hope for given the leakiness of most homes, and it is not really needed. Just neutral pressure would be good enough.
Negative air pressures in the home are a main reason that radon gas comes in through foundations and basements.

 

[Sunset]

....
I'm not sure if the incense was a good idea. It smoked up our place, and it smelled pretty bad. It wasn't as bad as the cig smell, but its fake sandalwood smell lingered for days, mixed in with a forest fire kind of smell from lighting matches!

..

When I suggested incense, it was to use the smoke that drifts/wafts up from the incense stick to see which way the wind is blowing right at the electrical outlets and the window casement edges, and along the baseboard near the carpet.

I suggested it as there would be less chance of fire than using rolled up paper.

Yes it does smell, but you could light it with a bic or butane lighter to not have the match smell.

You could also have an electronic smoking (vaping) friend, come over to gently blow the huge clouds of "smoke" at the baseboards etc to see if there is airflow. Have your friend buy some nice smelling vape liquid, and open the house windows afterwards.

Once you know the leakage points, you could caulk then closed.

 

[tmm99]

Unfortunately, there are plenty of ways to depressurize your house. Any time you run the clothes dryer or the bathroom fan it depressurizes your building envelope. Likewise with kitchen fans that vent outside and combustion appliances with a conventional flue. And then there is "stack effect" as warm are moves upward in the home and eventually some leaves through cracks, etc. So, most homes are at negative pressure when compared to the outside. The "approved" answer is to install a heat recovery ventilator that brings in outside air with a fan, and inside air is allowed to leave, but as it does so it exchanges heat with that incoming air so that energy loss is reduced (not eliminated). With the controls on these, you may achieve a small amount of positive pressure inside, which would probably stop the neighbor's smoke from coming in. Positive pressure is probably too much to hope for given the leakiness of most homes, and it is not really needed. Just neutral pressure would be good enough.
Negative air pressures in the home are a main reason that radon gas comes in through foundations and basements.

Wow, thank you very much for the explanation on how native pressures occur in a house and how to deal with it! So, the heat recovery ventilator, I didn't know there was such a thing! I will definitely keep that in mind. I hope we won't have to install this (requires poking a hole in the wall to the outside for a single room, and a lot of expensive work to get something through the roof?), but it's good to know we have that as one of our options.

 

[samclem]

I hope we won't have to install this (requires poking a hole in the wall to the outside for a single room, and a lot of expensive work to get something through the roof?) . ..

Normally an HRV would be tied into your HVAC system and would assure this clean, filtered outside air is circulated throughout your home. As houses become "tighter", the air in them has gotten less healthy due to all kinds of stuff that enters the air in our homes as we live (moisture, offgassing from plastics, dust, gassed and particulates from cooking, etc). In some places, HRVs (and similar active ventilation measures) are required by code in new construction.
They do improve indoor air quality a lot in tighter homes.

 

[tmm99]

Normally an HRV would be tied into your HVAC system and would assure this clean, filtered outside air is circulated throughout your home. As houses become "tighter", the air in them has gotten less healthy due to all kinds of stuff that enters the air in our homes as we live (moisture, offgassing from plastics, dust, gassed and particulates from cooking, etc). In some places, HRVs (and similar active ventilation measures) are required by code in new construction.
They do improve indoor air quality a lot in tighter homes.

Ah... So, then, my new HVAC system (4-stage HE HVAC installed 2 years ago) already has this? (It does bring in the air from the outside and pushes out the exhaust...) But I can still install a separate heat recovery ventilator to further pressurize my house? (Sorry, this is way out of my field...)

 

[samclem]

Ah... So, then, my new HVAC system (4-stage HE HVAC installed 2 years ago) already has this? (It does bring in the air from the outside and pushes out the exhaust...) But I can still install a separate heat recovery ventilator to further pressurize my house? (Sorry, this is way out of my field...)

Nope, you probably don't have an HRV or similar active ventilation unless your house itself is relatively new and tight. Older homes have enough leakage that the indoor air quality stays acceptable without these active measures to bring outside air inside.

 

[tmm99]

Nope, you probably don't have an HRV or similar active ventilation unless your house itself is relatively new and tight. Older homes have enough leakage that the indoor air quality stays acceptable without these active measures to bring outside air inside.

Thanks, I talked to the people who installed our furnace, and they said we don't have an HRV. They said the HRV will help dilute the existing air, but it won't pressurize our home because the same amount of air taken in will be pushed out, but it could still help because it will dilute the stale or cig smelling air.

 

[GrayHare]

Thanks, I talked to the people who installed our furnace, and they said we don't have an HRV. They said the HRV will help dilute the existing air, but it won't pressurize our home because the same amount of air taken in will be pushed out, but it could still help because it will dilute the stale or cig smelling air.

Restrict that outflow and voila, you'll have the desired, very slight positive pressure inside your home.