My wife and I recently fixed up a house to rent that was previously owned by a heavy smoker. The entire house _reeked_ of old tobacco when we bought it. We removed all the wall-to-wall carpet, we screbbed all walls and ceilings with bio-degradable TSP substitute, primed (with Kilz) and painted (two coats) all walls, ceiling and trim. The oak hardwood floors were thoroughly scrubbed. We also had professionals come in a clean the HVAC ducts, replaced the standard air filter and are now cleaning the broken electrostatic air cleaner in the HVAC.
However, our new tenants say there's still a stink of tobacco smoke, and they're concerned enough for their 1-1/2 year old son's asthma that they're saying they'll have to move out if we can't get rid of the smell.
We can't go back and re-prime the walls and repaint with something like B-I-N (which I discovered doing some research in the newsgroup). What other _reliable_ options do I have for abating the old smokey stench the tenants say is in the house?
I would consider a through clean of the frig, freezer, vacuum cleaning frig coils, defrost, etc. A heavy smoker, over time can have a freezer with nicotin traces.
Fixing the electrostatic air cleaner migfht help a lot. They use ozone to remove smoke smell after fires, from what I've read. If this would help, you could rent an ozone generator and use it in the house when they go on vacation. There are probably a lot of smoke pollutants left in the ducts and other inaccessable locations.
On 12 Jul 2006 12:56:34 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, "Kyle" quickly quoth:
Repair the air cleaner NOW! It'll really help if there are odors in the house.
Where in the house do they smell smoke? Any particular rooms/areas?
Let them move out and continue your smoke abatement without them if necessary. If they're opaque enough to confuse odor with asthma, they're not your ideal tenants by any means. When (not if) the kid has an asthma attack, one of their litigous friends will talk them into a lawsuit against you, and you'll pay even when you show that you have done everything right. Nobody needs that.
Do you smoke? If so, you're out of luck. You'll never smell anything. If not, does the house smell like smoke? If not, tell them you've tried everything AND LET THEM MOVE OUT!
When I quit smoking 19 years ago, I got new carpeting and padding, washed the walls, ceilings, drapes, and inside and outside of the cupboards and closets. After a few weeks, the smell was gone, and I have a -picky- nose. I can't stand to go inside a home which has had smoke damage from a fire even after supposed renovation. Cigarette and cigar smoke is much less piquant, luckily.
This new house I bought 4 years ago had a heavy smoker in it before me. It was horrible to walk into. I had a cleaning service come in and do the walls. They forgot to do the little office off the garage and it still reeks, but I seldom go in there. Good primer and paint cover what small amount of odor it has after cleaning.
TIP: Don't forget the closets and small niches, inside the cupboards, attics, basements, etc. Everything exposed to smoke will smell forever unless washed and painted. Shellac helps exposed wood if you don't want paint on it.
One last thing: if there are any openings or crevices into the areas behind the walls, smoke will have found its way there. Caulk every tiny opening into the house well. Sash windows hide some of these cavities.
G'luck!
--- - Sarcasm is just one more service we offer. -
Wow! Lucky you! Where did you find these tenants? After all of that cleaning, any lingering odor would almost have to be outside the living space it seems. Perhaps, if it is doable, putting caulk along all of the baseboards would eliminate the air movement through wall spaces. Just a thought. Another option, that I wouldn't be very inclined to do myself, would be to call up a restoration company that cleans up after fires - tell them what you have done already and see what they have to offer. A kid with asthma, huh?
Thanks to all who made CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions and observations (yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Nightcrawler!).
There are three things that may make the tenants seem a little more reasonable to y'all: (1) I have what's known as IgA deficiency (I'm lacking antibodies in places like the lining of my nasal passages) and therefore can sit in a room with two stinky cat litter boxes and not smell a thing; therefore my sense of "no, I can't smell anything" is not to be relied on. While my wife and I worked on the house with the windows open because of paint fumes and the like and there wasn't really a chance for the smoke stink to build up while we were there...I will say when we would get there first thing in the morning, you could smell that old stink. So the tenants ain't makin' it up. (2) The lady tenant is a pediatrician and instructor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, so she's got some credibility and is not Ms. Crackpot McWeirdo who got her medical knowledge from the conspiracy-theory sites on the Intarwebs. (3) When reviewing the tenants' application, we spoke with their previous two landlords, who had only glowing things to say about them and that they never made frivolous requests.
We pulled the cleaner assembly out of the electrostatic cleaner and it immediately made a difference. I thought it was excessive, but my wife bought a pretty pricey air purifier for the tenants.
The hardwood floors were covered with wall-to-wall carpet, so I think the scrubbing with wood floor cleaner would be sufficient to get whatever little amount of smoke made it through carpet and padding. Cracks and crevices we're just going to have to live with, as well as the exposed joists in the back of the basement and other places where smoke could have gotten.
My wife called GE (the maker of this particular electrostatic cleaner) and our best guess is this unit is ~30 years old. We either have to replace it with another electrostatic cleaner or come up with some way of scrubbing the tar and nicotine build-up off the filter frame as well as the inside of the unit. I think I'll also have to find a flat piece of HEPA filter material which I could fit into the filter frame.
Repainting the house is NOT an option at this point; but perhaps when the tenants move out at the end of the lease. Replacing the HVAC is also not an option since it is only 8 years old.
Normal cleaning of electrostatic air cleaners is done by running the filters through the dishwasher. This should get the crud out of it. Does the filter work properly? It should have a test button which causes a spark zap if the electronics are good.
Ah, but Bob, you're assuming this is a NORMAL electrostatic cleaner. This cleaner was made by GE, who says they haven't made something like this in a couple decades. My guess is it's been non-functional for at least 5-10 years. GE provides absolutely ZERO, zilch, nada support for this unit because they don't make household HVAC cleaners. It took 'em six hours longer than forever to figure out they even made this unit at one time. Geniuses, the bunch of 'em, God bless 'em all.
The unit is much larger than a standard air filter assembly, and there is a metal triple-layer frame. The outer layer on each side hinges open to accept a layer of some sort of special filter material in addition to there apparently being a small static charge run through the middle layer. The previous owner just had what looked like fine fiberglass mats sandwiched in between the metal layers.
My wife has scrubbed the metal assembly first with Dirtex (which did a fabulous job getting the tobacco crud off the metal window frames in the house) and then with hot water and bleach. Then I've cut a larger piece of HEPA filter material down to sandwich in the assembly.
Next step: an HVAC company we've used in the past and trusted is coming in to clean the AC coil - they're betting there's a nasty build-up there, too.
God, this is costing waaay too much. And smokers like drawing this nasty crud into their lungs because...?
We will possibly do that when these tenants move out - hopefully not until the end of their lease!
The floors we scrubbed by hand with Murphy's floor cleaner, and they seem to be OK.
Don't I know it. My father and I did an abatement in my aunt's house when she quit smoking just before her first fight with breast cancer. We got it all, and the house was fine...nothing nearly as persistent and nasty as this. But when the walls are a dingy semi-tan white rectangles on them from where a wall hanging was for 25 years, you know you're in for fun.
We can only hope. Not just for the welfare of those of us who can't handle being around smokers (I have a minor deficiency in my immune system where I cannot remotely tolerate vegetation smoke such as tobacco or burning autumn leaves), but for the health and well-being of those who are killing themselves one drag at a time.
Exactly why we bought this house. We're not in it to make money off the tenants' rent, but to have their rent cover our mortage and expenses of ownership while we build equity.
And while you cannot legally turn down a tenant who is a smoker, you can put a clause in the lease that prohibits smoking of any kind inside the house by either the tenants or visitors.
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