How to Deal With Smoke Smell

So, since I've gotten back to college, there's a problem with my apartment: cigarette smoke smell.

Basically, turns out that people have started smoking outside one stairwell and the smell goes straight up to my apartment because mine's the first apartment up from the stairwell. The stairwell smells, which can be avoided by just not using it, and after some excessive cleaning, have managed to remove most of the smell that accumulated on my couch and in my kitchen from the time I was gone over the summer. It is now not a problem unless someone is smoking. However, when they are, I end up coming back to a smelly apartment and having to wait a while for the smell to die down then hose the smelly areas with air freshener. I've contacted the realty office about the problem(I cannot contact the actual landlord because he does not seem to like to be contacted and has apparently left no contact information that the office will give me). They said they would send out an email reminding people not to smoke there.

Fast forward a week and some days, and nothing has happened. Given the past experience of myself and other people I know with this office, if they don't do anything immediately, they're not going to do anything ever.

So, how can I deal with the cigarette smoke smell and keep it out of my apartment? Words cannot convey exactly how much I hate this smell, and I can't just keep hosing my apartment down with air freshener all the time.

Any and all advice appreciated.

A guy I know that smokes says that dryer sheets help suck up the smell. (in his car anyway) They might also help around your apartment?

If they keep smoking you may just have to ask the place to seal your door up and stuff better (or do it yourself).


I hope the problem gets solved one way or another though, good luck.

I'd say you have three options:

• Explain the situation to your neighbors, and hope they're the agreeable sort.
• Give the aforementioned neighbors an equally noisome "incentive" to smoke there no longer, perhaps getting yourself evicted or even arrested in the process.
• Negotiate with the realty office.

The reason you can't contact the landlord is because he doesn't want to deal with you (or anyone else, for that matter). That's why he's paying the realty office a large sum of money every month to do it for him. If they do give you his contact information, then they're putting their own livelihoods at risk.

As for the mentioned solutions, number one is fairly straightforward; I won't comment on number two; and number three basically comes down to threatening to move out unless the issue's resolved. Consider, however, that if the smokers do not relent, then the realty office has to make a decision as to which renters to keep. That decision will probably center around who's paying more rent.

Good luck.

Edit: Also, check the local laws on renting. There's usually something about tenant rights, and so you may be able to go to court.

Have you tried asking nicely? It takes almost no effort on your part.

I do mean asking really nicely though. Go downstairs, smile, tell them your name, etc. If you yell from your window "take your cancer sticks elsewhere, smog breathers" or something equally inane, they'll just resent you.

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Originally Posted by cobaltstarfire

A guy I know that smokes says that dryer sheets help suck up the smell. (in his car anyway) They might also help around your apartment?

If they keep smoking you may just have to ask the place to seal your door up and stuff better (or do it yourself).


I hope the problem gets solved one way or another though, good luck.

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Thanks for the suggestion. Think the sealing the door might work, if there isn't any fire code stuff against it.

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Originally Posted by Grinner

I'd say you have three options:

• Explain the situation to your neighbors, and hope they're the agreeable sort.
• Give the aforementioned neighbors an equally noisome "incentive" to smoke there no longer, perhaps getting yourself evicted or even arrested in the process.
• Negotiate with the realty office.

The reason you can't contact the landlord is because he doesn't want to deal with you (or anyone else, for that matter). That's why he's paying the realty office a large sum of money every month to do it for him. If they do give you his contact information, then they're putting their own livelihoods at risk.

As for the mentioned solutions, number one is fairly straightforward; I won't comment on number two; and number three basically comes down to threatening to move out unless the issue's resolved. Consider, however, that if the smokers do not relent, then the realty office has to make a decision as to which renters to keep. That decision will probably center around who's paying more rent.

Good luck.

Edit: Also, check the local laws on renting. There's usually something about tenant rights, and so you may be able to go to court.

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For what it's worth, I have been a pretty good tenant and have a higher priced apartment in the building (not that it's stopped them from being bad about handling things before), so it may help, although it's been claimed there's a waiting list nowadays for my apartment building, so they may have no problem with me moving, especially given there's a fine for moving out early equal to a month or two's rent, if I remember correctly.

I will check out the Tenant's rights thing, thanks. Legal action, or the threat of such, may prompt them to do something, although I'd rather that be an absolute last resort.

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Originally Posted by valadil

Have you tried asking nicely? It takes almost no effort on your part.

I do mean asking really nicely though. Go downstairs, smile, tell them your name, etc. If you yell from your window "take your cancer sticks elsewhere, smog breathers" or something equally inane, they'll just resent you.

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I have no problem with people smoking until it ends up harming my stuff. The only problem with nicely asking people about the smoking matter is that I can't trace the apartment(as they're smoking just outside of the stairwell, so I can't know what apartment they're living in) and while I check outside whenever I come home and the smell is there, there's nobody out there, just a bunch of cigarette butts. Someone may turn up if I keep checking, so will ask nicely if I can encounter someone.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Hopefully it will help with or eliminate the matter.

I'm afraid that I have nothing to contribute, but I would like to say that the connection between the thread title and your username has implications... :smallbiggrin:

There are special smell sprays that kill the smell of smoke in the air. Buy one of those and use it often.
(Sidenote: I find it amusing that someone named Pyromancer is asking about this.)

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Originally Posted by valadil

Have you tried asking nicely? It takes almost no effort on your part.

I do mean asking really nicely though. Go downstairs, smile, tell them your name, etc. If you yell from your window "take your cancer sticks elsewhere, smog breathers" or something equally inane, they'll just resent you.

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I really doubt this is going to work. Most smokers are ***** and don't care about what non-smokers think; the fact that they smoke next to your place is inconvenient to you, but smoking somewhere else would be slightly more inconvenient for them, so they don't care. At best they will agree and still keep smoking there, at worst they will laugh at you.

My suggestion? Ask nice at first, and when it doesn't work, threaten them. They're smoking in a non-smoking area, so if they don't stop or move somewhere else, you will report them to the realty office. That's assuming the stairway actually is a non-smoking area, at least - if it isn't, you're out of luck.

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Originally Posted by Tengu_temp

That's assuming the stairway actually is a non-smoking area, at least - if it isn't, you're out of luck.

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Maybe you could put up a No-smoking sign of your own, just to make them think it is. :smallbiggrin:

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Originally Posted by Pyromancer999

I will check out the Tenant's rights thing, thanks. Legal action, or the threat of such, may prompt them to do something, although I'd rather that be an absolute last resort.

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One thing to keep in mind, at least where I live, is that tenant rights or whatever they're called amount to getting the court's permission to withhold rent until a given contractual obligation is fulfilled. I suppose it can't hurt to try, but it may not work out.

if you use the door look into various insulating products used for "heat retention" foams pads that go in the door jams to seal drafts. If you don't use the door- use masking tape.

You could try, when you're not home, leaving several damp towels around the edges of the windows and at the base of the door. Basically anywhere that air comes into your apartment.

The advice from sktarq is more permanent, but insulating your whole apartment might be costly (and probably isn't your job since you're a renter) and masking tape can harm the paint. So I'd suggest trying just some towels and see if that helps. If that solves the problem, you can look into something more permanent.

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Originally Posted by Anarion

Basically anywhere that air comes into your apartment.

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This brings up a good point...What about the building's HVAC units? It may not be part of the issue, depending on how the building is designed, but what if the smoke is coming through the air ducts?

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Originally Posted by Anarion

The advice from sktarq is more permanent, but insulating your whole apartment might be costly.

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Good grief not the whole apartment-that's overkill. I was talking about draft blocking insulation. Generally found as a foam tape you put in the door frame and very thin pads for the base of windows if applicable. Mounting tape works in a pinch and can be found in almost any collegiate student store. As decent masking tape won't harm your paint as that is kind of the point. Scotch or 3M Bluetape/painters masking is the most noteable brands you'd look for.

Depending on where you live, what they are doing may be prohibited. You'd need to consult a lawyer on things like that, but there are a few states that ban smoking wthin X feet of a residence, for instance.

It's just an annoyance for you, but it could be life threatening for someone with asthma or other breathing problems. Also it's damaging your stuff.

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Originally Posted by Pyromancer999

So, since I've gotten back to college, there's a problem with my apartment: ecig called Aerotank smoke smell.

Basically, turns out that people have started smoking outside one stairwell and the smell goes straight up to my apartment because mine's the first apartment up from the stairwell. The stairwell smells, which can be avoided by just not using it, and after some excessive cleaning, have managed to remove most of the smell that accumulated on my couch and in my kitchen from the time I was gone over the summer. It is now not a problem unless someone is smoking. However, when they are, I end up coming back to a smelly apartment and having to wait a while for the smell to die down then hose the smelly areas with air freshener. I've contacted the realty office about the problem(I cannot contact the actual landlord because he does not seem to like to be contacted and has apparently left no contact information that the office will give me). They said they would send out an email reminding people not to smoke there.

Fast forward a week and some days, and nothing has happened. Given the past experience of myself and other people I know with this office, if they don't do anything immediately, they're not going to do anything ever.

So, how can I deal with the cigarette smoke smell and keep it out of my apartment? Words cannot convey exactly how much I hate this smell, and I can't just keep hosing my apartment down with air freshener all the time.

Any and all advice appreciated.

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I am not sure there is any right way to remove smoke smell.. You can request the person to stop smoking in the premises..

Burning a candle (or candles) is an old trick several people used to swear by when I was younger (and smoking more common).

(Given the age of the tip I assume that they were non-scented candles, but I imagine scented candles will work just as well).

If you aren't doing so already, I'd suggest you also document the problem. Note down the date, time and nature of the annoyance in a log. You can present it to realty office to give them a better indication of what you're dealing with and it strengthens your case. You'll probably have to ask the smokers themselves to stop smoking outside the stairwell yourself first before you can escalate.

You might also want to ask around to see if anyone else is also suffering from the same problem. If more tenants complain, the realty office will likely give the issue more serious consideration. The realty office may also be able to do more if they know which tenants are smoking outside the stairwell. If they know who, they can address them directly and even levy sanctions against them if the problem persists.

Ultimately, it's very hard to get people to change their habits, even if those habits are causing serious problems for others. Depending on the kind of people you're dealing with, this may very well be very difficult to deal with.

Before I moved a few weeks ago I was dealing with a similar problem, but possibly a worse variant - I lived on the first floor and my upstairs neighbors would come downstairs to the shared porch area to smoke. (Often they would have big parties so there would be a ton of people smoking there late into the night, and it wasn't always cigarettes, either...) Unfortunately this meant that they were smoking literally right next to the door to my apartment and my livingroom windows, and the smoke was bad enough to cause me to have pretty serious problems with my asthma. I asked people multiple times to smoke further away from my doors/windows but since they had new random "friends"-slash-partygoers over every week, it didn't help. (I'll spare you all the discussion of noise, loud music at 4 AM, trash and cigarette butts as that is not relevant to the thread... ugh, I hated them so much!)

What eventually worked for me was figuring out where the air leaks were and sealing them off. Three windows got plastic sheeting over them (like you might do for winter drafts), and for the door I ended up using Glad Press'n'Seal plastic wrap. (If you haven't used it before - it is basically a cling film with a very light food-safe glue on it so you can press it onto a surface and it will stick - the same stuff they use to put stickers on fruit). There were only a few really drafty parts of the door (around the locks/doorknob) so I would just cover that area. If you have to use the door (like I did), this is a cheap, removable solution that you can take off and put back on relatively easily. I did this for about 9 months and it stopped the smoke smell and asthma when I was in my apartment.

One of my new housemates has a boyfriend who is here a lot, even when she isn't. I am not overly fussed as I've been that guy myself in the past, he's nice enough even if he's not always quite as great at cleaning up after himself as he might be (and obviously he's not paying rent). But he does smoke, unlike any of the rest of us in the house. He doesn't smoke in the house, but he'll go outside the front door and smoke there. The result of this, since the front door is open while he does so, is that the hall and living room are starting to smell of smoke too, not to mention that now it's getting a bit chilly all the heat in the house escapes. What confuses me about this is that we have a perfectly serviceable private garden at the back of the house with much more privacy, a door that doesn't autolock so it can be closed safely behind you, and a seating area so you can sit down rather than standing around looking a bit like a tramp. It's also further away from the main living areas so there are fewer soft furnishings to get all be-smoked too.

The next time I see him doing it I will have a word. What bewilders me is why he doesn't use the garden already.

Perhaps he sees it as "inside". As in "inside the area you are paying for". If a quick word doesn't do it a cheap ashtray in said private garden often will. Smokers can be herded by positive signals. In a world with so many no smoking signs a friendly ashtray is a beacon of goodwill to many.

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Originally Posted by Pyromancer999

So, how can I deal with the cigarette smoke smell and keep it out of my apartment? Words cannot convey exactly how much I hate this smell, and I can't just keep hosing my apartment down with air freshener all the time.

Any and all advice appreciated.

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That depends, what's your alignment?

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Originally Posted by Pyromancer999

I have no problem with people smoking until it ends up harming my stuff. The only problem with nicely asking people about the smoking matter is that I can't trace the apartment(as they're smoking just outside of the stairwell, so I can't know what apartment they're living in) and while I check outside whenever I come home and the smell is there, there's nobody out there, just a bunch of cigarette butts. Someone may turn up if I keep checking, so will ask nicely if I can encounter someone.

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Hm, maybe you can leave them a note with a smiley face or whatnot?