Cigarette smell from our semi-detached neighbor is seeping in

[RunningBum]

Could possibly be that the neighbor quit smoking for awhile, but started back up?

 

[njhowie]

I bought two of these and paid over $130CAD each at Lowe's I believe. They don't do squat even when I put two of them together. Do air filters ever work??
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B004VGIGVY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Costco has a more heavy duty one for like $400CAD, but I'm hesitating a bit. I could always return it if it doesn't work, so I should probably just do it, but I want to spend big money to try to eliminate the cause.


I didn't know about HVAC filters for smoke etc. I will definitely get one of those! Thank you!

They do work. As I mentioned - hotels and cruise lines use them and we had first hand experience. Walked in to the cabin and the stench of smoke was throughout. Cabin attendant told us to go away for an hour or so and he'd take care of it. Came back and the smell was gone and didn't return the entire cruise.

At home, we have a decent Honeywell and use it to remove dust/allergens in the air and it works wonderfully.

 

[samclem]

I didn't know about HVAC filters for smoke etc. I will definitely get one of those! Thank you!

You may need a filter that has activated carbon in it. What you are smelling is both fine particulate matter (and this is the majority of the issue, a very fine (e.g. HEPA) filter could catch these) and volatile gasses (which can't be filtered out, even with a HEPA filter. You need carbon to catch this).

I don't know if a furnace filter will prove to be a workable solution. Even with carbon in it, the pressure drop across a filter like that might wreak havoc with your HVAC system. You'd be better off with a standalone filter unit with appropriate filters. "For pollen and dust" won't cut it.

. . . Nothing is shared between the units, just the firewall is shared.

Are you quite sure there are no gaps in the wall in the shared attic area? Builders get sloppy up there. Also, sometimes they (against code) even dump the exhausts from bathroom fans, stove hoods, clothes dryers, etc in this space (whether or not the space is conditioned). Maybe go up there the next time you smell cigarettes and see if the odor is greater up there. If that's the problem area, you can address it in several ways.

I think the anti-vapor primer you want is "Zinsser BIN", rather than Kilz. It does block vapor fairly well, but (counter to some reports), this depends on the roughness of the surface and the number of coats applied. If you have truly "raw" exposed cinderblocks (which are properly called "concrete masonry units' today, unless they are really made of cinders) or a poured concrete wall, maybe up in the attic, you may be better off using a product like Drylock (made by USG) that does a good job of penetrating the porous concrete. Drylock is sold as a waterproofer, but it also blocks radon gas. Check, but I'm pretty sure it will block smoke fumes.

Drywall will block mass airflow (just as a cinderblock or poured concrete wall will), but it will not do a thing to block most vapor (just as a cinderblock or untreated concrete wall won't. )

In a nutshell, I think you'll need a multi-prong approach: block the smell where it is coming in as much as possible, then run an effective filter (HEPA, near-HEPA, possibly also activated carbon) on your side of the wall.

Good luck.

 

[samclem]

They do work. As I mentioned - hotels and cruise lines use them and we had first hand experience. Walked in to the cabin and the stench of smoke was throughout. Cabin attendant told us to go away for an hour or so and he'd take care of it. Came back and the smell was gone and didn't return the entire cruise.

At home, we have a decent Honeywell and use it to remove dust/allergens in the air and it works wonderfully.

What they used was ozone generator, not an air filter. The ozone reacts with the smoke particles (in the air and already attached to dust and objects). It is hazardous to breathe, which is why you had to leave the room. It also is tough on many textiles, rubber, etc. They are fantastic for smoke odors, but you can't inhabit the space where they are running.

 

[tmm99]

The issue is a ventilation pressure problem. Air/liquid always flows from a high pressure area to a low pressure area in order to reach equilibrium. Do you have a closed heating system? Take a few switch plates off walls and check the common wall for egress. Obtain or make a smoke tube using a few matches/candle and a paper towel tube. Extinguish the flame and place the tube over the smoke near the switches/outlets/cracks. Check the ingress or egress of the smoke direction to confirm; with and without the furnace running. Then seal that area, switch plate insulators are available, cracks are sealable. Close or minimize cold air returns in rooms closest to common wall. Open or maximize cold air returns in rooms furthest from the common wall. If your neighbors smoke in the bathroom with a bathroom fan running, that contaminated air goes into the attic. If your bath fan is not running, it is a intake source and a venturi effect from your furnace will pull that contaminated into your living space. Check your kitchen fan as well if it vents to attic, minimize the kitchen cold air return. If your heating system is requiring air, it will pull from the easiest place. So make it work harder to suck smoky air and make it easy to use fresher air.

It will also take a little work from you because it is a ventilation system and there are many moving parts. I had similar problems on a huge scale when dealing with sealed areas/ old works in coal mines. Contaminants from a supposed sealed area was infiltrating active works of the mine, diminishing air quality. It happens all the time.

Thank you for your post.

I'm not sure what a closed heating system is... We have forced air heating with intake an exhaust...

We have only one cold air returns on each floor, so we really can't do much with them. All of them are fairly far from the common wall (7-8ft?) Surprisingly, the attic had zero cig smell that we could detect. We had insulation topped just last year, so maybe it's not obvious? I don't know...

What do you mean by "If your bath fan is not running, it is an intake source and a venturi effect from your furnace will pull that contaminated into your living space."? Are you saying it would be good to run our bath fan (which goes out the chimney, which lowers pressure in the house...?)

 

[tmm99]

Could possibly be that the neighbor quit smoking for awhile, but started back up?

I doubt it, but I guess anything is possible. There are two of them.

 

[tmm99]

Are you quite sure there are no gaps in the wall in the shared attic area? Builders get sloppy up there. Also, sometimes they (against code) even dump the exhausts from bathroom fans, stove hoods, clothes dryers, etc int this space (whether or not the space is conditioned). Maybe go up there the next time you smell cigarettes and see if the odor is greater up there. If that's the problem area, you can address it in several ways.

We checked the attic yesterday, and surprisingly zero cig smell. All I could smell was pine and some weird smell...

 

[tmm99]

You may need a filter that has activated carbon in it. What you are smelling is both fine particulate matter (and this is tha majority of the issue, a that a very fine (e.g. HEPA) filter could catch these) and volatile gasses (which can't be filtered out, even with a HEPA filter. You need carbon to catch this). .

This is what I was looking at as the next thing (although I'd rather we find a cheaper solution since we already spent close to $350 on worthless air purifiers (with such great reviews!!!)

https://www.costco.ca/GermGuardian-...fier-with-Bonus-Filter.product.100284624.html

What d'ya think?

 

[samclem]

This is what I was looking at as the next thing (although I'd rather we find a cheaper solution since we already spent close to $350 on worthless air purifiers (with such great reviews!!!)

https://www.costco.ca/GermGuardian-...fier-with-Bonus-Filter.product.100284624.html

What d'ya think?

If anything would work, it would be filter like this. It even has an "ionizer" mode, which will increase ozone and do (in part) what a dedicated ozone generator does. It may also cause some lung irritation, I'd minimize the use of that, especially if my house was "tight".


Reservations:
1) You don't need the UV-C feature of this machine. It is for killing airborne bacteria and viruses. If you can save money by getting a similar unit without the UV-C you might save some money.
2) It may not have a high enough output to do your whole house. It probably depends on the "tightness" of your home (which might not be great,since you are having this problem in the first place)
3) Darned expensive. Stylish, pricey. You just need a quiet fan to push air through a very good filter. I'd think you could find something much less expensive to do the same thing. The key terms to look for are HEPA, activated carbon, the output of the unit (cubic feet per minute or cubic meters per minute) and how loud it is. A homely "console" unit might be cheaper, or a distributed number of smaller room-size units might do a more "even" job of catching the smoke throughout the house.

Try to be sure you'll be able to get filters in the future. A no-name brand might leave you stranded in a few years.

I think an online source might be less expensive, but Costco does offer the money-back deal.

 

[Boho]

I have the $250 Honeywell True HEPA Whole Room Air Purifier with Allergen Remover, HPA300. I don't think I ever got the notification from the indicator that the carbon filter needs replacing. With it on I can still smell smoke coming from the neighbor. I figure it must help somewhat, maybe to make the smell go away faster when it stops coming in, when the filter is newer. Maybe two of them would be a better idea. Definitely better to try than moving.

Maybe you should find a pro to check for leaks. Not someone from a small AC shop who has a candle. There are probably specialists who can get the job done and tell you what to seal. If you smell pine from an unknown source then you probably still have a problem.

 

[Sunset]

I understand OP wants a solution immediately, but I'd suggest finding the source first is the best route, otherwise OP will be throwing money in different directions hoping something works.
Worse would be OP does something, and the smell stops... yahhh, then the smell returns, and maybe its all unrelated to the action OP previously took.

OP - go around with the burning incense and doors closed and see where the smoke drifts near electric plates & switchs, door and window frames, and along the floor, plus check the oven and bathroom fan (with them off).
All this smoke drifting will tell you is if you have air leaks, where smoke could come in.

 

[Telly]

My guess, from similar situations, is an inside air leak from the adjacent unit, so all means to check it out are worthwhile!

A common building setup is a CMU fire wall, with a wood-framed stud wall on both sides, covered with drywall. The stud wall with drywall decreases noise transmission, may be insulated to further decrease noise, and it gives a house-look, rather than the industrial-look of CMU. But it also hides the firewall, so it makes it more difficult to check (and more likely that penetrations were made).

Any and every penetration of the party wall drywall needs to be looked at: Light switches, outlets, under the sink (pipes) of any kitchen, bathroom that touches the party wall. Those are easy to check. If no luck there, then look at the same items in walls 90 degrees intersecting to the party wall, they could have wiring/plumbing, etc. holes bored through studs that could give an air path from the party wall to them.

If no luck there either, then could be at the sole plate of the party wall. When drywalling, the ceiling goes up first. then the walls, the wall drywall is jammed upward against the ceiling drywall. This will leave a space between the bottom of the drywall and the subfloor. If carpeted, the carpeting is usually over a thinner underlayment, and baseboards are set up a bit so carpet edge can be tucked under the baseboard. Often, the baseboard is shimmed up with small blocks of wood to get the spacing. A leak can occur at the bottom of the wall there, like a joint between soleplates, drywall not fastened to a stud lower down leaving a small gap from the soleplate, a knot or wained soleplate, etc.

If a tile floor, same thing if tile done well, the tile will extend under the baseboard, so any gap as mentioned above can create an air path.

If tile done klutzy (yeah, my opinion), the tile might not extend under baseboard, the baseboard was installed first, tiled later, and the old filler "quarter round" is used at the baseboard to tile juncture.

 

[tmm99]

Good news. The owner responded saying he would check it out and get back to me. I wasn't sure if he would respond at all, so this is great news indeed. We will see what will come out of this. In the meantime, we'll still work on finding out where the smell may be coming from.

 

[tmm99]

I understand OP wants a solution immediately, but I'd suggest finding the source first is the best route, otherwise OP will be throwing money in different directions hoping something works.
Worse would be OP does something, and the smell stops... yahhh, then the smell returns, and maybe its all unrelated to the action OP previously took.

OP - go around with the burning incense and doors closed and see where the smoke drifts near electric plates & switchs, door and window frames, and along the floor, plus check the oven and bathroom fan (with them off).
All this smoke drifting will tell you is if you have air leaks, where smoke could come in.

Thank you, Sunset. You're right - I don't want to spend a huge amount of money blindly, hoping for the best. I want to find where the smell is coming from first and then put together an action plan.

I tried the insense just now (Finally having matches!), but it's night and even with all the lights on in my living room, with grey walls, I cannot see the smoke against the walls or against the electric outlets! I'll try again when I can see better, but I could see clearly that there's a lot of air leak around the sliding door leading to our backyard. We can try heavy duty tape to tape up the leaks and see. We'll also check leaks in other areas.

 

[tmm99]

My guess, from similar situations, is an inside air leak from the adjacent unit, so all means to check it out are worthwhile!

A common building setup is a CMU fire wall, with a wood-framed stud wall on both sides, covered with drywall. The stud wall with drywall decreases noise transmission, may be insulated to further decrease noise, and it gives a house-look, rather than the industrial-look of CMU. But it also hides the firewall, so it makes it more difficult to check (and more likely that penetrations were made).

Any and every penetration of the party wall drywall needs to be looked at: Light switches, outlets, under the sink (pipes) of any kitchen, bathroom that touches the party wall. Those are easy to check. If no luck there, then look at the same items in walls 90 degrees intersecting to the party wall, they could have wiring/plumbing, etc. holes bored through studs that could give an air path from the party wall to them.

If no luck there either, then could be at the sole plate of the party wall. When drywalling, the ceiling goes up first. then the walls, the wall drywall is jammed upward against the ceiling drywall. This will leave a space between the bottom of the drywall and the subfloor. If carpeted, the carpeting is usually over a thinner underlayment, and baseboards are set up a bit so carpet edge can be tucked under the baseboard. Often, the baseboard is shimmed up with small blocks of wood to get the spacing. A leak can occur at the bottom of the wall there, like a joint between soleplates, drywall not fastened to a stud lower down leaving a small gap from the soleplate, a knot or wained soleplate, etc.

If a tile floor, same thing if tile done well, the tile will extend under the baseboard, so any gap as mentioned above can create an air path.

If tile done klutzy (yeah, my opinion), the tile might not extend under baseboard, the baseboard was installed first, tiled later, and the old filler "quarter round" is used at the baseboard to tile juncture.

Thank you, Telly. We have hardwood floors (or laminate type) all throughout the house. No tiles or carpets. DH was talking about talking about removing the baseboard on the common wall also to check for leaks. We'll do the leak check all over the house.

 

[Lakewood90712]

My 2 cents worth hire a good general contractor or a good heating and A/C contractor to find the source. Both types of contractors are usually pretty good at sleuthing out odor sources and pathways.

Also, if you have leaky ducts in the attic, the heating system will expel conditioned air to the attic, and cause the interior of the house to draw in makeup air from any cracks, leaking weatherstripping and backwards from exhaust fans in the kitchen and bath that are not in operation.

You can have a heating contractor install a heat recuperating make up air system with charcoal filter to pressurize the house, but that is big bucks, well over $1K and maybe a lot more. Cheaper than moving.

 

[tmm99]

Thank you very much for all your posts.

In the end, their landlord emailed back and said he would pay them a visit, and within a day or two after that, the cig smell subsided substantially. The smell is now 99% gone. I still sometimes catch a whiff of the smell late at night, but only for a very short time. As this being the second time, I can now say definitively that the smell is seeping in from the inside (most likely the common wall), and not from the outside (They still have the ashtrays on their patio as before.)

As we cannot test for air leaks that well anymore (no cig smell to gauge the effectiveness of changes), we will resume the testing activity if the problem comes back.

The landlord doesn't respond to my emails afterward, but he does take action (I'm sure he doesn't want his house to end up smelling like an ashtray either), so that's a good thing.

I just wanted to thank everyone for posting. I will certainly use many of your suggestions if the smell comes back.

 

[jazz4cash]

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.

 

[msanniee]

I had experienced cigarette smoke coming from the neighbors who insisted they did not smoke. After extensive research, I was shocked to see how second hand smoke is really invasive and the only real way to address the smoke is to remove the source. After a year of misery, I bit the bullet and sold my place. I now live in a detached home with no more allergies. Good luck.

 

[Jerry1]

Tmm99,
I’m glad this seems to be working out. I agree that a quick thank you to the landlord is a good idea. I also agree that he very likely does not want smoking in his house. I bought my current house from a smoker. I didn’t think it would be a big deal since I knew I was going to gut the place and remodel. Wow was I mistaken. I think smoking should be a legally required disclosure on a property. Quick example, I thought I would just clean the air ducts. I ended up having them replaced. $5,000.

Also thank you for getting back to us. Seems like a number of folks drop in, ask about a problem and never let us know the final outcome. Makes one feel a bit used or left hangin’. Anyway, hoping for the best for you.

 

[Winemaker]

Thank you for your post.

I'm not sure what a closed heating system is... We have forced air heating with intake an exhaust...

We have only one cold air returns on each floor, so we really can't do much with them. All of them are fairly far from the common wall (7-8ft?) Surprisingly, the attic had zero cig smell that we could detect. We had insulation topped just last year, so maybe it's not obvious? I don't know...

What do you mean by "If your bath fan is not running, it is an intake source and a venturi effect from your furnace will pull that contaminated into your living space."? Are you saying it would be good to run our bath fan (which goes out the chimney, which lowers pressure in the house...?)

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.

 

[gooddog]

An easy way to seal the block wall is elastomeric paint: https://www.homedepot.com/s/elastomeric%20paint?NCNI-5

A decent product for eliminating some of the smell: https://www.homedepot.com/p/ZEP-16-oz-Smoke-Odor-Eliminator-Air-Freshener-Spray-ZUSOE16/202858239

 

[RunningBum]

Could possibly be that the neighbor quit smoking for awhile, but started back up?

It's sounding like this was correct. They probably stopped smoking, at least at home, for awhile, 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.

 

[Caskem]

Like I said in my post, we have no plans to sell, and my post isn't about that, but to mitigate the current issue, but thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Can you buy the neighbor out?

 

[Lakewood90712]

Can you buy the neighbor out?

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