tmm99
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- May 15, 2008
- Messages
- 5,221
Sorry for such a long post, but basically, the problem is that the cigarette smell is coming into our home from our semi-detached neighbor, and we want that to stop without causing too much friction. How can we make that happen?
We own/live in a semi-detached house in Ontario, Canada. A semi-detached house is a single family dwelling house built as one of a pair that share one common wall. Our common wall is a concrete block wall, and I believe it’s called cinder-block firewall or something like that, and it goes all the way up to the roof – it’s a hard wall, and there’s no drywall or insulation on top of it – the wall is simply painted over. Against this wall, we have our living room and dining room area, separated by our pantry room. Air vents, pipes, washer/dryer vents, water lines, electric wiring, cabling, etc, etc… Nothing is shared between the units, just the firewall is shared.
The owner of the semi-detached home on the other side moved out and rented his side to tenants who are cigarette smokers. I saw them smoking in their backyard, and that’s how I know. Anyway, I detected no smell of cigarettes in our house all summer, and in October, inside our house was all of a sudden full of cigarette smell. We thought maybe the air current was pushing their smoke from outside into our home, so we waited a few days, but no change. In the meantime, we bought two inexpensive air purifiers to mitigate this problem, but that didn’t seem to help much if at all. After a couple of more days of the smell seeping in, we concluded that they were smoking inside their house.
We realize that they have rights to do whatever they want in their rented house, but we decided to talk to the owner who is their landlord. We offered to buy an air purifier and have the owner give it to them (a more expensive one than the ones I tried, and I was hoping if they breathed out the smoke into an air purifier, and if the air purifier could handle it well enough, that the smell wouldn’t even reach our house.). Anyway, the owner said that they were non-smokers. He evidently asked them if they were smokers when he interviewed them. (The way he talked about it made me think that he didn’t have this in writing.) I told him I saw an ashtray outside. Currently, there’s a huge bucket full of cig butts, and several more lying about on their patio, and I am not sure if they ever empty the bucket or they do but only seldom? Anyway, at the time we talked to the landlord, there was just one big ashtray on their patio. The owner said he would speak to his wife and get back to us, but he never got back to us. Although he never got back to us, the smoke smell miraculously stopped the day after our conversation with the owner. I let the owner know via email that the smoke smell had stopped. (He never replied. We used to talk often as casual neighbors, but anyway…) And that was back in October, and I detected no smell at all since then, until the end of December. We had some good few days after that and then, since January 1st, the smell has been coming in every day.
In the meantime, we taped up the frame of our sliding door that leads to our backyard that is close to where those tenants smoke on their side of the backyard in order to prevent air leaks— no help. We shielded our furnace intake pipe outside on the side where these tenants live, thinking they may be smoking in front of their house as well — no help. We also checked our attic today, thinking that the common wall has settled (our house was built in the 80’s) and there may be a gap around the top and the air may be escaping through it, or the smoky air may be coming through soffits/air vents. Zero cigarette smell in the attic. My feeling was, if someone was to sneak and smoke cigarettes inside their house, they would most likely smoke in their bathroom with a fan on, and the smell may be leaking from there into their attic and then into ours, but well, it’s not leaking into our attic. Another place to smoke would be under their range hood with its fan on. I am not sure where the kitchen is on their side and if the air is vented out or if it’s a charcoal filter fan that leads the smoke to nowhere, which may trap more smoke inside their house.
We sent an email to the owner/landlord again, but I am not sure if he will ever respond to us or do anything. (He kind of insinuated last time that there wasn’t much I could do legally, although not in these words exactly.) All I can do is try to appeal to his conscience and have him cooperate with us somehow to reach some kind of solution (He has children and I’m sure he would be horrified if we were smokers moving into the other side of their wall and stinking up their home) – I believe we do have rights to enjoy our own home without worrying about second-hand-smoke, but anyway, we want to do whatever we can ourselves to alleviate this problem. If we can prevent the smoke from coming in, we won’t need to rely on other people to help us.
Has anybody dealt with this kind of situation? Or know any effective ways to resolve it? Any suggestions? Ideas?
I read that having positive air pressure in our home will drive our air into their dwelling instead of the other way around, but I am not sure how we can effectively raise our air pressure in our home enough, especially in the winter time when the outdoor air is quite cold. We are lowering our room temp and crack one window slightly to see if they will help.
What I don’t understand is I’ve never detected any food smell coming from the adjoining neighbor’s house before or after the new tenants moved in. That would make you think that nothing is really seeping through within the housing unit and that the smoke is coming from the outside, right? But we didn’t detect any smoke smell at all for about three months and I’m pretty sure they were smoking during those three months in their backyard, so that makes me think that the smoke smell isn’t coming from the outside into our home. I’m totally perplexed as to where the smoke smell is coming from and without knowing that, it’s hard to put together a good action plan.
I’m just trying to put everything I can think of out here, for the detective types on this forum.
We have no intention of talking to the landlord’s tenants in person. We really like our house otherwise, and we have no plans to move, so I would appreciate it if you could share your thoughts on how to find the source of the smoke problem and to mitigate the smoke problem.
Thank you for all your help!
We own/live in a semi-detached house in Ontario, Canada. A semi-detached house is a single family dwelling house built as one of a pair that share one common wall. Our common wall is a concrete block wall, and I believe it’s called cinder-block firewall or something like that, and it goes all the way up to the roof – it’s a hard wall, and there’s no drywall or insulation on top of it – the wall is simply painted over. Against this wall, we have our living room and dining room area, separated by our pantry room. Air vents, pipes, washer/dryer vents, water lines, electric wiring, cabling, etc, etc… Nothing is shared between the units, just the firewall is shared.
The owner of the semi-detached home on the other side moved out and rented his side to tenants who are cigarette smokers. I saw them smoking in their backyard, and that’s how I know. Anyway, I detected no smell of cigarettes in our house all summer, and in October, inside our house was all of a sudden full of cigarette smell. We thought maybe the air current was pushing their smoke from outside into our home, so we waited a few days, but no change. In the meantime, we bought two inexpensive air purifiers to mitigate this problem, but that didn’t seem to help much if at all. After a couple of more days of the smell seeping in, we concluded that they were smoking inside their house.
We realize that they have rights to do whatever they want in their rented house, but we decided to talk to the owner who is their landlord. We offered to buy an air purifier and have the owner give it to them (a more expensive one than the ones I tried, and I was hoping if they breathed out the smoke into an air purifier, and if the air purifier could handle it well enough, that the smell wouldn’t even reach our house.). Anyway, the owner said that they were non-smokers. He evidently asked them if they were smokers when he interviewed them. (The way he talked about it made me think that he didn’t have this in writing.) I told him I saw an ashtray outside. Currently, there’s a huge bucket full of cig butts, and several more lying about on their patio, and I am not sure if they ever empty the bucket or they do but only seldom? Anyway, at the time we talked to the landlord, there was just one big ashtray on their patio. The owner said he would speak to his wife and get back to us, but he never got back to us. Although he never got back to us, the smoke smell miraculously stopped the day after our conversation with the owner. I let the owner know via email that the smoke smell had stopped. (He never replied. We used to talk often as casual neighbors, but anyway…) And that was back in October, and I detected no smell at all since then, until the end of December. We had some good few days after that and then, since January 1st, the smell has been coming in every day.
In the meantime, we taped up the frame of our sliding door that leads to our backyard that is close to where those tenants smoke on their side of the backyard in order to prevent air leaks— no help. We shielded our furnace intake pipe outside on the side where these tenants live, thinking they may be smoking in front of their house as well — no help. We also checked our attic today, thinking that the common wall has settled (our house was built in the 80’s) and there may be a gap around the top and the air may be escaping through it, or the smoky air may be coming through soffits/air vents. Zero cigarette smell in the attic. My feeling was, if someone was to sneak and smoke cigarettes inside their house, they would most likely smoke in their bathroom with a fan on, and the smell may be leaking from there into their attic and then into ours, but well, it’s not leaking into our attic. Another place to smoke would be under their range hood with its fan on. I am not sure where the kitchen is on their side and if the air is vented out or if it’s a charcoal filter fan that leads the smoke to nowhere, which may trap more smoke inside their house.
We sent an email to the owner/landlord again, but I am not sure if he will ever respond to us or do anything. (He kind of insinuated last time that there wasn’t much I could do legally, although not in these words exactly.) All I can do is try to appeal to his conscience and have him cooperate with us somehow to reach some kind of solution (He has children and I’m sure he would be horrified if we were smokers moving into the other side of their wall and stinking up their home) – I believe we do have rights to enjoy our own home without worrying about second-hand-smoke, but anyway, we want to do whatever we can ourselves to alleviate this problem. If we can prevent the smoke from coming in, we won’t need to rely on other people to help us.
Has anybody dealt with this kind of situation? Or know any effective ways to resolve it? Any suggestions? Ideas?
I read that having positive air pressure in our home will drive our air into their dwelling instead of the other way around, but I am not sure how we can effectively raise our air pressure in our home enough, especially in the winter time when the outdoor air is quite cold. We are lowering our room temp and crack one window slightly to see if they will help.
What I don’t understand is I’ve never detected any food smell coming from the adjoining neighbor’s house before or after the new tenants moved in. That would make you think that nothing is really seeping through within the housing unit and that the smoke is coming from the outside, right? But we didn’t detect any smoke smell at all for about three months and I’m pretty sure they were smoking during those three months in their backyard, so that makes me think that the smoke smell isn’t coming from the outside into our home. I’m totally perplexed as to where the smoke smell is coming from and without knowing that, it’s hard to put together a good action plan.
I’m just trying to put everything I can think of out here, for the detective types on this forum.
We have no intention of talking to the landlord’s tenants in person. We really like our house otherwise, and we have no plans to move, so I would appreciate it if you could share your thoughts on how to find the source of the smoke problem and to mitigate the smoke problem.
Thank you for all your help!
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