Neighbor's Lighter fluid fumes

It's really none of your business how he lights his fire. Leave it alone.

Reply to
Steve Barker LT
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A high powered rifle will solve the problem and if you can hit the neighbor in the head and the grill as it exits his head, you will also ignite the fluid in his grill as he dies. That takes practice....

Reply to
Don Hard

Fan.

Reply to
dadiOH

That'll just blow the fumes around the room, not remove the fumes.

Reply to
Abe

What does it feel like? Are these feelings different if he uses a third of a can or a half can? How do you judge fumes?

Oren

Reply to
Oren

This will...

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Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Wisnia

Fan blowing out the window. Out the window facing the source of the malodorous fumes. IOW, prevent their entry in whatever way possible. Maybe even close the windows and seal them up (except for the hole for the fan, of course). If all else fails, gas mask.

Reply to
dadiOH

Another obnoxious smell is the metallic odor of lawn weed killer. Just as my garden's in spring bloom, the peonies and iris and lilacs are at their fragrant peak, some neighbor is bound to spray weedkiller and stink up the neighborhood.

Ah, well, I'll take bad smells any day over loud music or the sound of leaf blowers.

HellT

Reply to
Hell Toupee

:Live in the city, where the houses are close, but not on top of each other. :Everyone has a small yard. : : A couple times last year one of the neighbors prepared their charcoal BBQ :using what 'I thought' was an excessive amount of lighter fluid. I say, 'I :thought', only because the fumes from the pre-light were quite powerful. :Didn't say anything about it and at this point I'm not sure who the culprit :is. However, it started up again today and I'm not in the mood to put up :with it for another summer. : : Outside of lighting my neighbor's house on fire, which approach might be :best. :1. Tell him/her to stop it all together as it poses a heath risk and is :quite annoying? If he refuses call the fire department. :2. Ask how much fluid he is using. If his response seems excessive, then :tell him to cut back. Again, if the odors seem excessive, then call the :fire or health department. : :I get the feeling he's using about a quarter of a can. I'm only judging by :the strength of the fumes.

I'm on your side 100%. On the Memorial Day weekend, I went with family to Angel Island in S.F. Bay and there was a party upwind from us who were barbequing. The lighter fluid fumes were irritating me bigtime and they lingered and lingered.

I've been annoyed many times in the past by lighter fluid fumes. I think you should try either or both of the measures you indicate above. Pay no attention to posters who suggest you should live with this.

When I barbeque (it's rare nowadays, but I used to not uncommonly) I'm very frugal with the lighter fluid. I put my briquettes in a bottle and squirt in a little fluid, cap the bottle and jostle things around to get the briquettes wet and I let them sit a while to absorb the fluid. Then I put them on my barbeque inside of a large coffee can that has both ends cut out. This facilitates the lighting of the briquettes. Then remove the can and spread things out and in a few minutes you are ready to cook.

Anyway, the point is it's important to not use excessive lighter fluid, and it is an imposition on your city dwelling neighbors, no matter how little you use, in my opinion.

Dan

Reply to
Dan_Musicant

:> The best 11.99 plus a few bucks for shipping you'll ever spend in the :> pursuit of good neighbor relations. You might even get invited over :> for some grilled yummies. : :I checked out the reviews. (see link below) They are all very positive. :May be the route to go. May get one myself. Will talk to the neighbor :beforehand. It could be that he's letting the fluid sit too long before :igniting. : :

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:Curious though, do you cook on it too? Or, do you pour the charcoals to a :regular grill after they get lit. : :Do the newspapers go on the bottom or along the sides? : : :Thanks for the idea. I had been thinking of buying a new gas grill or :revamping the old one. This seems like a better solution. : I like this idea a lot. The coffee can idea I posted above is similar, but this would obviously be better and it uses no lighter fluid. I think you might be able to make your own, if you are so inclined.

Reply to
Dan_Musicant

:"Charlie S." wrote: : :> A couple times last year one of the neighbors prepared their charcoal BBQ :> using what 'I thought' was an excessive amount of lighter fluid. : :Another obnoxious smell is the metallic odor of lawn weed killer. Just :as my garden's in spring bloom, the peonies and iris and lilacs are at :their fragrant peak, some neighbor is bound to spray weedkiller and :stink up the neighborhood.

Uh, huh. Agreed.

:Ah, well, I'll take bad smells any day over loud music or the sound of :leaf blowers. : :HellT

Do you get to pick your poison? Probably not.

Reply to
Dan_Musicant

What you are experiencing is the work of an amateur. I went to a barbeque last Saturday and sat less than 10 feet from the grill. There were no lighter fluid odors. The guy running the grill knew what he was doing.

Contact your local health department. Ask about regs on noxious fumes and ask if they have officers working on the weekends.

Dick

Reply to
Dick Adams

You're sure he's not lighting some of those never to be sufficiently damned citronella tiki-torches an hour or so before his cook-out? That would explain the long hang-time and the excessive stench.

Reply to
Goedjn

You have a good point. Maybe they are not using lighter fluid. I can remember starting many BBQ's using lighter fluid. The smell was pretty much contained to a small area. Wherever these fumes are coming from have to be

100 feet away or more. Next time I notice the smell, I'm going to investigate.
Reply to
Charlie S.

I can just imagine what his food tastes like. If it is the lighter fluid and not a tiki torch, why don't you make him a present of a bag of Kingsford Match Light. It might help. Bob

Reply to
The Other Funk

Or maybe the smell is coming from Kingsford Match Light, which smells suspiciously like lighter fluid to me. And because it's burning, the smell travels far and lasts a while.

But really, and I'm trying to say the nice version of what some others have already said, if this is the only problem you have with your neighbors, I'd just deal with it. I recently moved to a suburb of NYC where the houses are pretty close (about 10 feet on either side, but with decent sized back yards suitable for parties), and there's all sorts of stuff that goes on that I could get myself worked into a tizzy about if I really wanted to be a jerk. The guy next to me blasts WKTU whenever he's outside, for one thing, including the entire time he's barbecuing. The neighbor in back of him encourages it; he says to turn it up whenever he's out there. On the other side of my house, I seem to find at least a couple of new empty Dunkin Donuts bags on my lawn every day, and when a new fence went up over there, they trampled down a whole bunch of my trees in back. And behind me, where I've just got a chain link fence, my neighbor's got about five dachsunds that act like I'm burglarizing their house every time I water my grass.

If your biggest issue with your neighbors is that you smell some Match Light every once in a while, for god's sake, just close your windows for a while and turn on your air conditioning. I'm sure you do some things that could be considered just as, if not more annoying to them.

Honestly, if somebody came over and gave me a chimney starter as a gift, I'd see right through it and think they were even more of a jerk than if they'd just come right out and told me to quit stinking up the place so much. I think the only options are to either be totally honest or do nothing. And the best option is to do nothing and just relax.

Reply to
basscadet75

See right through what. I told him to tell the neighbor the smell bothers him, and to present a way to avoid the fumes. Telling the neighbor not to stink up the place so much and expecting them to limit their grilling (and therefore enjoyment of their own property) is just asking for a feud.

What would you do if your neighbor came by and told you to stop stinking up the place so much by grilling? Tell him to jump in a lake, I guess. So how is your suggestion at all useful?

Reply to
Abe

See right through their "gift" to what they were really trying to say. Do you have some different definition of gift-giving than the rest of the world? Most people give gifts when they're trying to make the recipient happy. You're suggesting giving a gift in order to make the gift *giver* happy. If it were me receiving that gift, I'd say "thank you", close my door and tell my wife what an asshole that guy is. Then I'd go right on doing what I always did.

What you suggested is classic passive-aggressive behavior. NOBODY responds well to that.

If I got along with my neighbors as the OP says he does, I'd ask what about my grilling stinks so much and if he convinced me I was doing something different than anybody else who grills, I'd change it. Note that doesn't mean he *could* convince me, but if he can't convince me by being honest then he's not going to convince me by giving me a chimney starter as a "gift" either.

The point is there are two people involved here, the one doing the grilling and the one who's annoyed by it. One of them is being reasonable and one of them isn't. If these are two normal adults, they can work out between them which one is the reasonable one - it may be the griller, it may be the neighbor smelling it. Giving passive-aggressive gifts is not being "neighborly", it's just being annoying.

Reply to
basscadet75

Hear hear. On any reasonable person's list of Important Things, lighter fluid smell has got to be way down there. There's only so much "political capital" one has with one's neighbors, and time and fortitude is much better spent building up the capital (getting to know one's neighbors) and spending judicously on more important things, like safety issues and things which may involve property damage. (And, no, I'm not convinced there'd be a safety issue in every vapor that may waft past one's nose).

Banty

Reply to
Banty

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