117 new of 119 responses total.
I have some incense for you, Sindi. I'll put it in an envelope and leave it on your porch sometime today.
Doesnt incense create the same kind of health problems as second hand cigarette smoke?
Incense creates particulate matter, and could even be an allergen. I think *all* smoke is unhealthy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incense "Recently research was carried out in Taiwan that linked the burning of incense sticks to the release of minimal amounts of carcinogens by measuring the levels of Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons within Buddist temples. Sitting in a smokey room, all day, every day may cause cancer after many years." What exactly is the object of smelling up your place, Sindi? To get back at the neighbor with her smoking? I'd instead start with the department of public health since it is rental property, and there is a problem if you can detect a neighbor smoking.
I did a quick search of the Ann Arbor Housing Code and I dont believe that having cigarette smoke go from one apartment to another is in voilation of that code.
The police said there is no law against smoke or smells going between apartments. So the only way to prevent it is for neighbors to cooperate, or block wherever it is getting through. We have put many hours into trying to block it. It is reduced but still enough to make me feel sick for several days whenever I spend a few hours there. The upstairs neighbor claims to be a respiratory therapist/technician with allergies. The police also did not seem concerned about doors slamming. The front doors slam if people go through them from the front hallway without holding them as they close. I have asked Jim to put a door closer on the door that we put onto my living room. It might help keep the smoke level down in the living room, where I have a window open, since the smoke appears to be coming up the basement stairs and maybe also directly into the kitchen. We could also put a door closer on the basement door. I cannot seal it off because my bathroom is in the basement, which is why there is this problem in the first place. The leaky ductwork from upstairs runs through my apartment (in the basement). We sealed off the front door already (to the smoky hall). Thanks for the incense, Mary. The porch of the new house? (We are at Jim's for a few days). Thanks for the curry suggestion slynne. I could add some extra chili peppers to Jim's portion, since he likes chili peppers. He says he also likes garlic, which I don't usually cook. And I like onions and cabbage fried together, maybe with curry powder. Having the fan blow into the living room helped for a while until the car fumes started coming in. The front yard is used for parking. Having them blow out pulled the strong ashtray smell into the living room. I may have to open a third window and blow into the living room right next to my desk if the door closer does not help. If it does work, I can leave the kitchen door wide open and the basement door (to the kitchen) wide open and run the bathroom exhaust fan. My neighbor got very upset at a very small amount of noise when we were moving a small wooden strip on the front doorframe to adjust the weatherstripping, at 3 pm. If she complains about slamming doors, I can complain about slamming doors at all hours and explain why I need a door closer to keep the smoke out of my living room. I don't know how much incense I would need to burn to equal the amount of carcinogens produced by two packs of cigarettes a day. Kiwanis probably has more if I need it. I have occasionally burnt onions by accident. We might keep trying to plug holes in the heating system by running a fan in the kitchen door blowing out, while walking around downstairs with a lit candle.
You could adopt a skunk.... Well, the police may say there is no law, and the Code may say there is no law, but I still recommend discussing this with the Dept. of Public Health. They may have ideas for ways to approach the problem that have not yet been considered.
Someone suggested discussing this with the neighbor's therapist but that would require cooperation, which I have never had from the neighbor. We are waiting a few days to see whether it helped for the police to talk to the neighbor about not smoking in the apartment. He said she was addicted and could not be expected to quit. I said she had quit for a few months and just started again recently, at which point he said he would talk to her. I did not talk to him again after this. He also said there was no city law against smells between apartments. Complaining to the city might just get both apartments closed. There is a $650/month including heat apartment for rent not far from where she works (less than a mile, free U of M bus). The landlord has not been home for a couple of days. I want him to suggest this to her, and also pass along my offer of me paying $50/month towards her rent there from whenever she moves until the end of this year. It would probably be cheaper than she pays now, considering she is heating to about 80 without storm windows, on the top floor with 3.5" of insulation above and none in the walls. My place is still about 55-60 with two windows open, and drops to no less than 48 in the kitchen with the door open wide for a few hours. The side apartment here will probably also be opening in the next month or two and is a large efficiency, probably a bit cheaper. Not many windows, but she sleeps days anyway and ran an air conditioner last summer instead of opening up.
"might just get both apartments closed" - that would solve the problem, wouldn't it? Asking the Dept. of Public Health would probably reveal that they have no jurisdiction on this, but it would still be informative to hear what they have to say. Other building of public accomodation are being affected by smoking restrictions. Private rentals are also considered in some regards as "public" as they rent to the public, and are already subject to many codes. I think it would be worth it to you to get more information.
The lease did not forbid smoking indoors. I was lucky that the last two upstairs smokers lived with nonsmokers and went out on the balcony to smoke. She does not want to get cold. So I have two windows and a door open instead. Getting both apartments closed would not solve my problem of a place to live. We are going to keep working on the physical problem, starting with weatherstripping two doors and maybe then running the bathroom exhaust fan continuously, leaving the kitchen door open when I am there, and putting a door closer on the door between kitchen and living room. Also spending more time in the basement with a lit candle and a fan upstairs blowing out, which pulls the smell upstairs immediately. That might make it easier to find more leaks. The front hall is already sealed off from my place, that worked. Jim also adjusted the door from the back basement to my basement to close tightly. And of course we put duct tape over all visible cracks, or drywall compound in the larger holes, in ducts and wall, and plastic over all my heat vents. I am probably the only one in Ann Arbor running a window fan this month. More on Monday. I need another couple days to recover from the smoke poisoning.
I talked to the landlord, who offered to pay for any door closing hinges, and does not know why the inspector insisted on one on the laundry area door which she also insisted on. I keep it propped open. He also said he would not rent to any other smokers upstairs while I lived there, and did not know he was renting to someone who was going to smoke this time, and that she had talked about moving in September but did not have the security deposit. I said if we could not fix or wall off the smoke problem I would pay for her to move, a month's rent. The people next door in the efficiency are hoping to find a 2-bedroom to take care of their son who will be released from long-term care (he was hit by a car) and I will tell them about the nice 2-BR down the street, if they can handle being third floor. The landlord wondered how I would use the bathroom if I sealed off the basement door.
If you devoted the time you have spent working on this problem working on the new house instead, you might get it finished enough to move into and the problem would be solved. You said that you couldn't move into the new place because there wasn't any plumbing. Fully plumbing a house shouldn't take more than a day or two, especially if the wall covering isn't up yet.
I suspect the taxes on the "work in progess" house are pretty low right now. At what point would that change? It's possible Sindi can't afford to finish the house.
Glenda, have you ever designed and installed plumbing in a new house? The plumbing also has to go in after the heating, and the heating is going in the floor, and the floor goes in last, after the ventilation and wiring and wallboard and windows (we have only storm windows in now) and painting and doors and probably a few other things. We might be able to put in temporary wired-in heat and plumbing before the floors but there is a lot more to do first. Most of our time is spent doing research and design. This month we are insulating the cellar ceiling under the porch and we need to paint a board. There is a well ventilated furnace room under my apartment that can be used to paint so I will get that much use out of my apartment. The taxes were $1400/year and I forget what they went up to this year (with inflation). They will be about $4000 when the house is done plus whatever percentage the average house price goes up between now and then, on the part that is not done yet. Minus $1200 back from MI, which has not gone up in 25 years despite everything else at least doubling. Still a bit cheaper than rent, even if you add water and heat costs. We have most of the materials, except for heating system, concrete for the floors, wallboard, and interior windows, and glass for the front porches. All of this together might be as much as I pay for two CT scans. I will be done with CT scans in winter of 2009 and hope to have much of the house done by then too or at least 250 square feet with plumbing. Off to paint a board and maybe weatherstrip my apartment doors.
Ah, so you have at least another couple of years at the apartment. Moving might be an option for you but maybe this woman will choose to move first if you are lucky.
The landlord says she will be out by September and probably this spring. He persuaded one family to move (they had two adults and two kids in a small 1BR, and two cars in the driveway by driving them past each other through my yard at all hours) by raising the rent. We won't be working on the house from early Feb to late March so I don't need to cook for us at my place (which is a block away) and after that it won't be so bad to have all the windows open until July, when the furnace will go off. It is running when it is 75 out. First we will try the weatherstripping and door closers. The police told me it is not unreasonable to be nailing things at 3 pm, which she complained of last time we weatherstripped the front door. And that there is no law against letting doors slam, like she does at all hours going in and out. The door closers will help keep smoke from going between rooms. The weatherstripping will also help us determine if the smoke is only coming from the basement, in which case we can seal off the basement door and use a bucket instead of the bathroom for a few months. I got a large bag of weatherstripping (paste-on foam) from freecycle. We can burn incense in the cellar and test whether the door is airtight. Or weatherstrip before painting a board down there today. There is no city law against painting during the winter, which my landlord did one February in the hallway so I had to leave my window open for a month.
Any chance of having friends help with the installation of any/all of the stuff needed in the new house with Jom being the contractor? Years and years ago, my ex and I built our own house from ground up with the help of family and friends [we did contract out a couple things-like putting in the foundation of the house and the installation of the bricks in front of the house. I think we may have contracted out the siding as well, but I don't remember for sure.] We started the house in the spring, worked on it primarly in the evenings and weekends, and was able to move in before Christmas and did a bit of finishing afterwards-basic stuff like the carpeting, linoleum, and the kitchen countertop and sink. We saved LOTS of money by doing this mostly ourselves/family/friends and was able to customize the floor plans and such to make the house even nicer.
Lots of friends have offered to help and sometimes we use help, but right now there is nothing for even me to do, and when there is, it is mostly research. We spent the day discovering that two microwave ovens, a stereo system, and a tape deck here no longer work, and a serial mouse was confusing the computer so the modem was not working, then we heated up leftovers and picnicked at 40 degrees. My hands are too cold to type now so bye.
I helped build my first house before I was 14. My dad was a carpenter by trade. Plumbing usually goes in before the walls are closed in, much easier to put pipe in if you don't have to thread it through the walls. In fact, when we had the plumbing quoted out here, the plumber stated right up front that the quote did not include the taking down the plaster to gain access to the pipes, we had to either do it ourselves or have another contractor do it. Of course this may be a special situation since we want the waste pipe from the toilet upstairs moved over a foot or so to allow room for a washer/dryer unit in the bath.
Our plumbing is all (with one exception) going into the interior walls, which are completely open. In Austria someone showed me how he was putting plumbing in the concrete block walls (with a chisel). Shouldn't Cross be asking what plumbing has to do with incense?
We put the plumbing in first, too. Less work and more cost-effective to do it that way.
We will be running most of the electrical wiring in surface conduit or wiremold, after the wallboard. We have temporary fluorescent shop lights in now, very handy. Most of the comforts of home. The toilet gets flushed with rain water and we bring over bottles of drinking water and try to wash dishes with them. I froze yesterday, a hot bath did not thaw me, and I am spending the day trying to get warm (mostly in bed) while Jim weatherstrips the first door, which might contain the smoke (in the basement) or at least will let us know if it is coming from both sides of that door. Weatherstripping the door to the front hall eliminated half the problem, last summer. Three more doors to weatherstrip after that, if necessary. I could seal off the laundry room (and wash in the kitchen sink?), which is where the return air passes through a channel formed by nailing a sheet of metal over the joists, but then there is a risk of the pipes there freezing. No basement wall insulation The ductwork there is an absolute mess, some of it leftover from before it was split into apartments and not used. If I have to seal off the entire basement area, we would have to use a bucket as a toilet. I doubt privies are legal in the city. A usable kitchen would be nice. The smoke may be coming in through holes in the floor (where the gas piping comes in for the stove, in two different places).
Today Jim packed rope caulk around the door to the front hall (which really stunk the last time I was in last summer or spring) and continued puttying the deep gouges in the door from kitchen to basement (last tenant had an unruly dog), and put a lot more drywall compound on three larger cracks in the supply air ducts in the basement, and using a candle discovered that one of the four supply air ducts to the upstairs was spewing out large amounts of hot air because the two pieces had come apart. This might explain why my apartment was 10 degrees warmer than last winter (before I opened the windows and doors, anyway). He wired the pieces together and stuffed the cracks with drywall compound. I have been at his house since Thursday, using online dictionaries for my translation work. There are excellent ones for Slovak and Czech. The stinkiest part of my apartment was over the part of the basement where the supply air ducts go through (kitchen and top of the basement stairs). We could also seal the holes in my kitchen floor where the gas pipes go through in two places. Former owners seem to have used gas stoves in two places and an electric stove in one of them. There are also holes where the upstairs plumbing goes through my bedroom (not in the wall) but we caulked around the boards covering the plumbing. Maybe with 33% more heat (and smoke) going upstairs, the furnace will not be running 90% of the time. It has very worn and very noisy bearings and sounds like a truck going right under my desk. Jim went back to work on rewiring the new cellar again.
After fixing three holes and a separated duct, Jim came back and still smelled smoke at the top of the basement stairs. Tomorrow he will keep working on that door (filling the dog gouges and then weatherstripping it with the tough rubber tubular stuff in a metal edge that you staple or nail on). The landlord left a message on the phone there which Jim picked up asking him not to work on the problem tomorrow because the upstairs neighbor was very nervous and might have a breakdown. The police said you could work on apartments between 7 am and 8 pm. Jim swims until 8:30 am. We have some new ideas. I have offered the landlord $500 if she leaves and it will have to be by Feb 1. There is a place closer to where she works, top floor, for probably less than she pays now. I would be willing to pay $100/month for using the place as a storage locker until it is habitable again, without working on the smoke problem. Electric heat upstairs would solve the problem. The landlord might lose less money paying for that than renting me a storage locker or having the place empty. The neighbor next door in the efficiency may be moving soon and her place is cheaper and relatively isolated (nobody upstairs, some stairwell noise if the next upstairs neighbor is as loud going in and out). In the meantime Jim will continue weatherstripping.
It occurs to me that you might try overpressuring your apartment, so air cannot leak into it from areas with smoke. You could do this with a small fan in a duct set in a window that opens to an area of "clean" air. That would also partly solve the overheating you experience (in winter). I forget - is your unit heated by a common forced-air system? If so, my idea would not keep out fumes picked up from return air vents in other apartments.
I tried blowing air in with a large fan (from the porch) and it blew in car fumes, and even when it was working there was still enough smoke to make me sick for a week afterwards. It still hurts to breathe today. The two apartments have 'separate' heating systems but her ductwork goes through my apartment and is extremely leaky. I have not been heating. I wore three pairs of heavy wool socks, three wool caps, warm sweater, down vest and down jacket for the few hours I was there Thursday. Jim pointed out that with her duct put back together the basement will not be as warm and therefore my apartment will not be as warm either, but a lot of heat just comes through from the ducts to the wall, which radiates. Tomorrow he will be looking for more holes in the ductwork to plug, and also weatherstripping the door at the top of the basement steps. Maybe the landlord will give me a key to the house next door that he is fixing up to sell so I can use the bathroom there, since mine is in the basement. Or I can use a bucket and empty it somewhere. The ground is probably not diggable. The furnace fan, despite having very worn bearings, is still rather strong compared to a small window fan, and if I put a very powerful window fan blowing in, it would get very cold in there and freezet he plumbing as well as me. It might work in May and June. She heats when it is 75 out but the furnace should be off July and August. Thanks for the idea. We tried a lot of things already. And we are not going to stop working on it for a day to be considerate of someone extremely inconsiderate. I am paying rent and should be able to use the place and it is legal to work on it during normal working hours.
but if she has a breakdown, she might *have* to move.
"blowing air in with a large fan (from the porch)" is not the same as what I suggested. That just circulates air at the point you blow; it does not overpressure the interior. To do the latter you have to have a fan that completely fills the cross section of the duct (or a squirrel-age blower), and seal other gaps (as you are doing). Of course, you would have to install such a blower where it brings in clean air, if that is possible. The furnace blower doesn't matter as it just circulates air.
The fan in the window was overpressuring the interior, not circulating air. It was bringing outside air in. Jim tells me after a day's work yesterday he smelled smoke again in the evening. Today I phoned the landlord who is 'pretty certain' the neighbor will be out by May 1. He says she spent two days in the hospital with high blood pressure. (Her third time in the hospital in a year, the other two supposedly for drug interactions). And has not smoked since Thursday. And has only smoked when I am not there. And only smoked 1/2 a cigarette. And would not smoke in the apartment (she told him probably Friday, he did not recall). And would give me her sleeping schedule so I could be quiet then. I pointed out that if there were still smoke in the apartment we would have to continue working on the problem, and close doors firmly and maybe with an automatic door closer. THe landlord left us one (I forgot to ask where). The one to the upstairs apt makes a great deal of noise whenever she goes through the door. And maybe use a bucket instead of the bathroom if it came to sealing off the basement door with rope caulk like we did the front hall. The landlord grew up without plumbing so we talked of that for a while. The ground is too frozen to dig a privy right now. If the neighbor in #3 moves, the upstairs neighbor, he thinks, would be willing to move to that efficiency apt with nobody upstairs or downstairs and a separate air supply. She could ask people not to let door closers slam from 7 am to 7 pm. Jim will continue working on the weatherstripping and he promised not to 'hammer' this afternoon. He will be using a staple gun. There are no rules against talking loudly in your own apartment. I can hear and understand upstairs phone conversations (this end) sometimes. Jim and I have been talking in the kitchen not the living room until now. He listens to talk shows. He said if you were not supposed to make noises that you can hear outside your own apartment, she should not be using her toilet, especially from 11 pm to 7 am when people might be sleeping. I know this is getting ridiculous. Laws were only meant to be invoked when people refuse to cooperate.
If there is a heaven, your landlord will be there, eventually. I'd kick everybody out and start fresh. ;-)
Jim said he did not smell smoke there yesterday. I will go check when I stop feeling sick. I froze for a few days in the apartment with the windows and door open, and then on Sunday at 40 degrees at the building site, and still have swollen glands. Jim will continue working on the door to the basement (with a belt sander after he puts more drywall compound or wood putty in the gouges) but he thinks basement smoke would still come upstairs into the kitchen around the plumbing and gas pipe holes, which he also needs to plug. There is plumbing going through the bedroom (to the upstairs kitchen above it) but we already caulked the boards covering it. At worst, I might be able to tightly weatherstrip from living room to kitchen and hold my breath going through the kitchen to the living room (I have to use the kitchen door since the front door goes through a smoked hallway). The side apartment may be vacant in a couple of months. Ideal place for a smoker who sleeps days. It used to be a local food store and has several times as many fuses as the rest of the house, labelled meat freezer, etc.
As far as I know, there are no laws or regulations that forbid smoking in your own apartment. As long as she's not breaking any laws or regulations, why should she be forced to move?
There are no laws against working on your apartment between 7 am and 8 pm. Why should I be forced to move? The landlord said he would not have rented to her if he knew she would smoke in that apartment. He does not have a written lease. Many property owners forbid smoking and/or pets. I don't know of any that forbid listening to the radio during the daytime - why should I have to be super-quiet just because someone on the other side of a thin ceiling wants to sleep then?
I'm not suggesting that either of you move. I'm suggesting that since you both have serious need for extremely low rent, poorly maintained housing, that you accept that reality, rather than trying to manipulate your landlord and her into letting you be the one who stays.
If Cindy can provide a doctor's note stating she has special respiratory considerations then he's on the hook for whatever smoke seeps into her apartment.
I cannot accept smoke in my apartment and still live there so Jim will continue to work on the problem if the smoke continues. If the neighbor wants to cooperate so will I. I was very quiet for a whole year, using headphones to listen to music, not playing piano unless I heard her walking around, not talking loudly, etc. I can do it again. Jim did not smell smoke there yesterday so he did not work on the place yesterday.
I'd be afraid of the lady trying to gas stove herself to death cuz that also could get you too.
You are being plain silly, Todd.
True ;)
Re resp:23: If the problem is holes for piping and the like, look for something called "Great Stuff" at hardware stores. It comes in a red aerosol can. It's a foam that you spray in place that expands and hardens to form an airtight, styrofoam-like seal. Wear old clothes while using it. It's the stickiest stuff I've ever seen and it ruins clothing on contact.
Otherwise known as urethane foam. I used it to fill from the inside the rusting wheel wells on a car I had. It held all the pieces together as well as keeping dust and water out of the interior.
Jim has cans of it but he would go through them fast so he is using up old drywall compound. He also uses it in wheel wells then paints something black over the foam for protection. He went back to my apartment after taking off from 2 to 6 when the landlord called and asked him to be quiet after 2 pm today and tomorrow. The landloard told Jim the neighbor would only smoke when I was not there (which could be fixed by having her think I am there all the time, of course). Jim explained (as I did a few days ago) that smoke stays around afterwards and this is not an acceptable solution, and he would be quiet just these two days for the last time, while waiting for the landlord to tell us she would not smoke in the apartment. Otherwise we use my place normally, which includes working on the smoke problem between 7 am and 8 pm, listening to the radio at normal volume despite the thin cracked ceiling and leaky ductwork, etc. I am phoning often to check whether I have messages on the answering machine. I could hear the upstairs answering machine when people left messages and understand what they were saying. Jim managed to burn the beets in the microwave oven so now we have the doors open and the fan running here. (I have the bedroom door closed).
Jim promised the landlord not to work on the weatherstripping, in fact he promised not to even be in my apartment, Sat and Sunday (today) from 2 to 6 pm. So he went around 7 am and at about 10 am there was some pounding on the front door from the hallway and it was so hard that the caulking got knocked out, and then he heard noises in the kitchen, someone walking around and looked for some weapon like a hammer or something to defend himself and went to see what was going on and whoever it was had left and slammed the door. He said the doorbell also rang but since he does not live there he did not answer it, also he does not answer the phone, just lets it take messages for me and it rang but nobody left a message. He was rather upset, so phoned me and we discussed it and at 2:00 he left and came back and phoned my landlord who wondered why we could not just discuss matters with the neighbor and he explained again that she only knows how to scream abuse. There followed a long discussion about how for a year I have been unable to use the apartment normally because of her sleeping hours, and how we can hear everything she does upstairs because the walls and ceiling are thin, including her phone conversations and what she does in the bathroom and bedroom. And that I have been super considerate of her sleeping hours but she won't let us know what her schedule is and if she does it changes. For instance she sleeps 8:30 to 12:30 and 4:30 to 6:30 and a few months ago when she refused to cooperate in solving the smoke problem the landlord weatherstripped her door to the front hall, without fixing the problem, so we waited until 3pm when she had been tromping around for an hour, to weatherstrip my door She phoned and told Jim she was sleeping. (I could not phone to find out because she got mad once when she forgot to unplug the phone). He said he would be done in five minutes. Then she called the police. Etc. Jim says the landlord is starting to understand that the neighbor is the problem, and this house is not designed for people who sleep days. Much less to share between smokers and non-smokers. And that I am tired of having to be super quiet every day during normal waking hours, without even getting any consideration in exchange such as her being quiet at night or not slamming doors at 2 am. The landlord said his lawyer said he could not change the lease to non-smoking. Jim said he could give her a new lease since it is month-to-month and other landlords have no smoking no pets leases, especially where air is shared between apartments. I offered to be super quiet again on her schedule if she were on a no-smoking lease and followed it. Jim said he said she said she had gone outside to smoke. She has said this before, which could be true, but before she also smoked inside. Better than a soap opera unless you have to deal with it yourself. I have not been back there since two Thursdays ago. Jim fetches my mail. I use online dictionaries to work instead of my own. It just might be illegal to try to pound your neighbor's door open and then walk through their other door without permission. Probably more so than vacuuming or having the phone ring at 10 am. ANd I know it is legal to weatherstrip an apartment between 7 am and 8 pm.
Your neighbor sounds like a mental case. She is also unreasonable to think anyone should be super-quiet during daylight. I used to work 1:30am to 8:30am when I delivered bagels for Bagel Factory. When I slept during the day, I would turn on a fan for white noise and hang quilts on the walls for sound insulating. I guess as a smoker, maybe you'll get lucky and she'll smoke in bed, fall asleep, and cook like a chicken just long enough before the fire dept arrives to save the rest of the house.
Quite seriously, she probably does have mental problems, considering when she screams at us it is often about 'mental health', therapists, and the names of specific drugs. I don't really want to have all my things smoked. Or smell burning chicken, as a vegetarian. Last time I attempted to be polite on the phone the message was 'get some mental health' so I stopped answering it. Tuesday we will probably go check for smoke. I have enough stress to deal with Monday (which is today already). Jim has weatherstripped another door. He said he smelled smoke in the furnace room but it might have been Friday. He can check there first. ANd maybe weatherstrip that door too, as well as the door from the back basement to my basement area. He stuffed drywall compound in the holes in my kitchen and bedroom floors around the plumbing and gas pipes and sealed all around all the heating vents and was going to pry off the baseboard quarter round and seal behind it. But her return air ducts run through my part of the basement and we can't seal my place off from them and still use the bathroom (in the basement). He might weatherstrip that door anyway and give up the bathroom. This is why his kitchen faucet has continued to drip.
Too bad Jim can't repair a smoke eater/ionizer for the lady so she can kill herself without the extended stink.
Jim is going to assume the smoke problem is taken care of and work on security measures now. I phoned the police and asked some questions about that. It is okay to leave lights and radios on timers, as long as the radios are not loud between 10 pm and 7 am. This will make the place seem occupied. The shades will be kept down. The neighbor told me last year not to leave notes on her door (it was unfriendly?) and not to phone her (she might forget to unplug the phone when she was sleeping). I will ask the landlord (or maybe the police) to let her know that I do not want her attempting to talk to me, phoning me or my answering machine (she has been abusive to both), or banging on my doors or windows, or ringing my doorbell, which I will consider harassment and report to the police. It is not legal to try to pound down someone's door, or to walk through someone's door into their apartment uninvited, and we are considering filing a report on that. Jim says the neighbor has succeeded in getting me out of my apartment but now she has him in it instead and he is going to make normal use of it. Also do the work on it that the landlord approved of, and which he was doing at the time the landlord said was okay instead of the time convenient for him. Which times were all legal (between 7 am and 8 pm).
Jim reports smelling smoke at the top of the basement stairs (which lead from my bathroom to my kitchen) but not in my kitchen, and hypothesizes that the ductwork in that wall (which was added in the 50s, both wall and ductwork) is not sealed. The wall itself is quite warm all the time from escaping heat. There is no way to fix that problem other than removing the drywall to get at the ductwork. The only solution would be to tape the door shut and not use the bathroom. He also reports that he talked with the landlord, who asked him not to work on the apartment Wed and Thurs during hours when the neighbor was sleeping (which Jim is waiting to hear back about - the landlord said she did not answer the phone when he called, about 5 min before Jim heard her go down the stairs and out the door). Jim is willing not to be there those two days at whatever times the landlord specifies. The landlord also says the neighbor will be moving in a couple of days. No more details. Jim will ask the landlord, when he hears about hours, whether the landlord will be changing the front door lock, or whether he should do it himself. We have not yet reported the trespass and attempted breakin to the police. There will be a lot of cleaning up to do from all the plastering dust, etc. Starting hopefully Friday. I can vacuum while Jim rekeys the lock to the front hall.
This is all a reality show, right?
So when do we collect the prize? It is far too real. I can celebrate by playing my piano at 3 pm, Bach Partita No 2.
Sounds like she didn't want to sign the monthly lease for a non-smoking apartment. Bravo!
Nobody signs leases for these apartments and apparently nobody but me even pays security deposits. The landlord could not give us the times to be out of my apartment for the next two days, or the date that she will be out, so Jim will resume working on smoke blocking and security measures at 7 am. Today we filed a police report about Sunday morning's pounding on the door and person coming into the kitchen and walking out again. Apparently the police were called out at the time by the neighbor (they have a report for that time and this place) who objected to Jim stapling weatherstripping in the basement two stories below her. He came up when he heard pounding and yelling on the door and assumed it was her usual crazy behavior and then that stopped and he heard footsteps in the kitchen in back. The patrolman will ask the previous patrolman about what happened and if it was the police who came in without knocking and without announcing themselves. Since the landlord asked us to file the report I left him a message with the report number. A neighbor wonders why there was a police car here again today. He has been hearing stories about me trying to drive the neighbor out of her apartment with noise. We are explaining to neighbors what is going on. The patrolman asked if it could have been the maintenance person. Jim said 'I AM the maintenance person and was working here at the time the landlord asked me to' (in the morning instead of the afternoon). 'A couple of days' sounds a lot like 'it's almost certain she'll be gone by spring'. Jim asked when the front hall door lock would be changed.
8:30 phone call (very polite) from the neighbor who said the landlord said to leave me her schedule in writing for the next two days when she would be working 12 hour shifts and it was near the front door because she did not want to go near the back door (I bet the police contacted her yesterday about that) and she was about to hang up when I insisted on knowing when she was moving. Saturday, to the apartment next door, because her therapist told her it was bad for her carpal tunnel syndrome to be carrying groceries up the steps and she should be on the first floor..... She called back asking where she could get moving boxes. (Kiwanis). I called the neighbor upstairs next door who had heard nothing about this so we are assuming it is the other next door house which is currently being fixed up for sale (as apartments) by my same landlord. So I phoned and left him a big thank you but Jim will not be out-of-the-ordinary quiet for the next two days without something in writing from her, or verbally from the landlord, giving him a day and time when he can change the front door lock to the shared hallway. I am trying to track down the repairman now. It should be very quiet in the house next door with nobody else there, unless someone wants to continue working on the remodel of the other apartment.
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news- 21/117017177559530.xml&coll=2&thispage=1 http://tinyurl.com/2fvz2c This article made me think of this item :)
Do you want to summarize for those of us dialed into grex directly via DOS? I found a message on the answering machine here after not finding a note, and it could possibly be interpreted to mean she left her sleeping schedule poked into the door between the front hall and my apartment, which I have not used for many months and have sealed off with weatherstripping and caulk. Today we are using the apartment normally (listening to radio, playing piano that cannot be heard out the window, talking, walking around) but not working on weatherstripping. The smoke can only be smelled at the top of the basement steps and that door has to be pulled hard to shut. The landlord has not answered my phone messages.
Love thy neighbor? Many don't, according to police Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Of all the things I'd miss about my house if I moved, one thing tops the list: No neighbor problems. I may not have a media center or a swimming pool. But no neighbor keeps a barking dog tied up in the yard. Nobody wakes me up with his music at 2 a.m. every morning, or leaves nasty little notes on my front door about unclipped hedges. Nobody has threatened to poison my cat. And there's no mean old man two doors down with nothing better to do than put his nose where it doesn't belong. Not long ago, an Ann Arbor man called police to say his neighbor's dog was pooping on his lawn, but the neighbor denied it. So the man asked the Ann Arbor Police Department to run a DNA test. On dog doo. Request denied. "This ain't 'CSI,''' said Lt. Mike Logghe of the AAPD. If you've ever taken a look at a police department's daily log, you've seen for yourself how many times police are called out to handle neighbor disputes. "We get these kinds of calls all the time,'' Logghe said. "All the time. Obviously, when you have people living in very close proximity, sometimes you have some situations that lead to at the very least hard feelings. And sometimes crimes against each other. But a lot of times the problems aren't a crime. They're more of a nuisance.'' Sometimes the solution is as simple as pointing out a city ordinance. Otherwise, officers will mediate as best they can and try to come up with some ground rules that both parties can live with. Sometimes the problem leads to a lawsuit, which is how it sometimes ends up at the Dispute Resolution Center, a nonprofit center in Ann Arbor. Serving Washtenaw and Livingston county residents on a sliding scale basis beginning at $25 per session, mediators help settle all kinds of disputes, including those ugly ones between neighbors. Most often, the problem involves such things as noise, children playing in the driveway, even the smell of a neighbor's barbecue, which was at the center of a recent case. "They come to the table and talk about how they can live their lives with some consideration of their neighbor,'' said Belinda Dulin, director of mediator services. One woman was angry because the neighbor kids played basketball in their driveway at night. She wanted them to stop by 8 p.m. The mother thought that was unfair. They were kids, after all. The situation was resolved when the family agreed to move nighttime activities to the opposite side of the house and set its own curfew. Mediation typically takes two or three hours, and begins with opening statements from both parties. Then they brainstorm, evaluate options, and choose one. Then they put it in writing as a contract between the parties, who typically end the session on much better terms than when they started. Dulin said feuding neighbors could follow these same techniques on their own. "A person should ask the other party if they want to talk about it one- on-one, and develop an environment where they can talk about the problem and not yell at each other,'' she said. "I would suggest they be open-minded to the many different possible solutions there could be to resolve that problem.'' And if they're stuck, they should find a neutral third party to help. Those who want to prevent these life-sucking neighbor problems need to be reasonable, she said. "We live in a society where conflicts are common,'' she said. "You might have a conflict. But that doesn't mean you can't find a solution.'' The Dispute Resolution Center can be reached at 734-222-3745. Jo Mathis can be reached at jmathis@annarbornews.com or 734-994-6849. The absence of these problems may not add to my property value. But too many people know firsthand how neighbor disputes can make an otherwise peaceful existence rather hellish.
I would have loved to see the Dispute Resolution Center handle the John Favara and John Gotti dispute. *snort*
Difficult to talk about problems with someone whose standard responses is to scream abuse. The neighbor across the street showed us the same newspaper article. He has been watching police cars stop at my place and the one next door for a couple of years, for various reasons. Asked what it was about this time. I got one call and two messages from the upstairs neighbor today about her leaving a note 'in your door, not in back' but I did not find anything near my mailbox or front door. Maybe she left it in the front hall, which I have been telling everyone I stopped using nearly a year ago because we have sealed off my door to keep out the smoke. Tomorrow at 10 am the landlord and repairman will meet with Jim to discuss security and what he has done. Jim wonders what the upstairs neighbor thought about his carrying a few lengths of 6" ductwork (round) into the back yard, after he had spent a few days puttering around in the basement banging on things, and whether that might have affected her decision to move. The ductwork is from a neighbor and is headed to the new house for use in ventilation. Jim told the landlord that if the neighbor wanted it quiet for a couple of days she should give the landlord her schedule and he should pass it along to Jim. She said he said to give me her schedule (which she may think she has done). I would not be surprised if she is trying to sleep at 10 am tomorrow when the three of them are touring the apartment and basement and checking out the ductwork. Jim says the landlord cannot object to him plastering a lot of holes and cracks, when my lease says not to make holes in the walls. He has been trying to seal a wall which is probably full of smoke from leaky ductwork. Eventually the plaster (drywall compound) should be painted. He even repaired gouges in the door so it would seal better. I need to be up and headed to my apartment in less than 8 hours. Some day this will end. I hope you are all enjoying the details.
Indeed. Neighbor fueds are always interesting.
Jim woke up at 4 and came over to guard my place at around 5:00 and I joined him at around 9:00. The neighbor has been tromping around since about 10:00 (after asking me in a phone message to be very quiet until 1:00 pm. THe landlord has not showed up and it is 2:00. He was due between 10 and 12, and he does not answer his phone. Jim says we will stay until we have to leave. He is giving blood at 5:00, the 57th day after the last time. He has to wait 56 days but yesterday there was a 1 1/2 hour wait so today made an appointment. He is wondering if his blood pressure will be up over the usual 105/60. Jim has continued with security measures. He showed me all the places he plastered or puttied. It smells much better here now than 2 weeks ago bu is rather dim with all the shades drawn and I am getting tired of listening to talk radio. He says without the radio on people can here conversations between apartments. We still have Mary's two sticks of incense. Jim has asked if it is okay to burn them upstairs to see if the smell comes through, but we would probably wait for upstairs to be vacant (if this is really going to happen). Jim is improvising lunch out of what he found in the cupboard. He emptied and turned off my refrigerator so it could dry out and get cleaned while I was not living here, but now we are an occupying force and getting hungry. Breakfast was vegetarian pita wraps on vegetarian bagel and lunch will involve a can of tomato sauce and grapefruit juice. Time to call the patrolman who was here Sunday to ask if he found out who came into my kitchen - the previous police officer or the neighbor.
Jim found that one big crack in the central hallway wall had come unplastered (the plaster cracked again) and when he opened it up smoke poured out, so the walls are definitely full of smoke. So I left and on the way out ran into the repairman, who is painting next door, and said the landlord was there too and was expecting me to phone before he came. I was expecting him to come over. We could not phone because he was not home and the phone just rang. The upstairs neighbor will be moving into that apartment some time over the next week or so. Jim offered to rekey the lock here as late as Tuesday. That apartment is downstairs from someone who gets up at 4 and goes to bed at 8 and is half-deaf and watches a lot of TV. I can hear her TV in the summer with my windows shut. Should be an interesting combination. There wont' be a smoke problem because the ductwork for upstairs is in the attic there. ALl four of us had a long and rather loud conversation in my living room at one of the times the neighbor upstairs said she was going to be sleeping but we had heard her walking around from 10 to 2 after saying she would sleep from 9 to 1. The landlord asked Jim not to hammer during her sleeping hours. I told him her real hours have nothing to do with the message she left on my machine (and obviously nothing to do with what she told him either). Jim got two free tubes of caulk and continued with the plastering and aired the place out. The door and window are open again with a fan blowing out so I can use the computer briefly. We have to play this day by day. Jim is going to occupy the place until I can move back in, including all night. He will be sure to close all doors firmly when he gets up to use the bathroom at night (which probably is irrelevant for someone who is up all night anyway). Jim said he would rekey the front door for free as late as Tuesday. The landlord said he would do it after that. I might be moving back in after a week or two. They will also paint the upstairs, replace the four different patterns of bathroom linoleum (with metal strips in between them, and some of that is even in bad condition) with one matching sheet and maybe even fix a few sash cords, in the hopes of getting a reasonable tenant next time. I suggested another kitchen cabinet rather than just the sink cabinet. Jim is thinking of postponing his flight to Ireland from Wed until whenever I can move back in here with the door rekeyed. It could cost us $500 or more. Better than me paying two more months rent for a place I can't use. The police officer is off duty until Saturday so we can't ask who walked into my kitchen and pounded on my door. I have a 40 degree house to escape to. I rigged up a computer but the two modems I brought over did not work - one took all the phones off the hook but was found as a modem on com2. The other (same model and jumpers) was not recognized at all but the phones still work. So I am back typing in a cool breeze while Jim microwaves potatoes for supper. If we can seal off the walls well enough here I won't be bothered by the painting upstairs in February. Latex paint stinks for 30 days. The furnace seems to be running only about half as much now that Jim reconnected the two ends of the separated duct, and plugged large holes in the other ducts. It was running all the time when it was 40 out.
Jim is thinking of postponing his flight to Ireland from Wed until whenever I can move back in here with the door rekeyed. It could cost us $500 or more. Wouldn't it be cheaper to rekey the door with your own locksmith? I see no sense in Jim postponing if you can just get it over with. I think a locksmith may charge $30-50 for one door.
We cannot rekey the door until the neighbor is gone. We are hoping it will be Saturday or at least Monday. He does not want to leave me alone here unless the neighbor has moved. I think she sleeps Monday during the day so perhaps she will move before then. I will be cleaning up here for a few days including vacuuming. Jim has been prying off the quarter round from baseboards to plaster behind it and needs to nail it back on later. Or maybe just caulk it in place. I have been hearing noises sort of like dragging furniture upstairs since 8 pm, which is when she supposedly started her shift. Encouraging. Jim is still refusing to believe anything she says. Jim can take the cylinder out of the door and leave it off to be rekeyed Monday and pick it up after my doctor's appointment. (Then we could celebrate - I bought two bags of half-price bittersweet chocolate chips to get sick on). That would leave a whole day to pack him and finish putting software on a friend's computer and turn off the drippy kitchen sink faucet at his place.
Breaking news. At 9:30 am someone started rapping on the door from the front hall to my apartment so we ignored it. It turned into pounding and we were about to phone the police when it moved to the back door and it was the police. She said both neighbors had complained of banging noises. Our radio level was acceptable, she said. She was told the noises stopped before she came. We assured her we had not made any noises louder than closing the door to the basement (which Jim demonstrated) which she said was okay. While we were talking we heard several loud banging noises coming from the upstairs stairway and front hall, due to the neighbor tromping up and down letting the door slam, which she had been doing a lot of all evening. The police heard them too. Jim went and explained that the neighbor keeps harassing us this way (twice in six days now) and we had filed a complaint about someone walking into my kitchen on Sunday. My guess is that the neighbor deliberately kept slamming her door and the neighbors next door reported that. It was not clear whether both people called or one corroborated. The police went away without having heard anything but door closing or slamming noises. I told them we turn off the radio at 10 pm. I don't know how many more times she can get away with this but I hope it ends Saturday. I expect a couple of new feuds next door. There is plaster dust all over the place and sweeping just spreads it so tomorrow I will be vacuuming. I don't know of any rules against doing that particularly from 7 am to 10 pm. The place is pretty dusty in general since I have not been there much for a week so it might take a few days to clean it before I move back in. Monday? I am typing at 40 degrees again, using an external modem. Nice clean air. Jim is the sole occupying force. I hope he gets a bit of sleep. He is a heavy sleeper but it is hard to sleep through the usual front door slamming and other noises from upstairs. Perhaps I should report them?
Jim was unable to get back to sleep after the police woke him at 9:30 (with a complaint about banging a few minutes before 9:30) so worked some more on the plaster. He heard TV and walking noises upstairs at 2, 4, and 6 am. He biked back to his house to check the mail and found a message from yesterday mid-day from the neighbor apologizing if she made noise late the previous night (we will never know since we were not here) and to know what time I retire (I never attempt to sleep here because of noise from the kitchen above, and doors slamming when she goes in and out at all hours). The announement on Jim's phone said we don't often check messages there. There are no TV noises or walking noises this morning. After breakfast Jim will fetch the shop vac to vacuum up the plaster dust. This neighbor still does not believe I don't use the door to the front hall, or that I do not sleep here. If I used the front door, believe me, she would know it. The front doors are solid and make a lot of noise when the door closers slam them.
That's why I like owning a house. We can bang all night and nobody has to hear it besides the kid and my mother-in-law. ;)
This morning I thought Jim was listening to an unusual radio station in the kitchen, but at normal volume. Turns out it was the next door neighbors' radio. So we asked the police to clarify what acceptable radio volume is, and the two men who showed up were the ones who were here Sunday morning. They did not come into my kitchen uninvited Sunday so it must have been the upstairs neighbor. They were sympathetic and good listeners and said noise was 100 decibels at the property line (which I think is only for outdoor garden equipment noise, not indoor noise) and there was no problem if people played the radio that loud. For some reason the radio went much softer shortly after they left. The police have now been called Sunday, Tuesday (to report Sunday), Thursday, and Friday of this week. And twice before this. Sunday and Thursday the reports were of noises that had 'stopped just before they called'. I played an entire book of Bach Preludes and Fugues on the piano. The upstairs neighbor has been going up and down the stairs a lot today. I emptied one bookcase into three milk crates (vacuuming the books as I went, first time I vacuumed anything in a year because I had been avoiding making noise in the daytime until now and boy is it dusty in here). Jim moved the bookcase and is going to plaster this corner, which is over the furnace room, which smells like smoke. First he repaired the vacuum cleaner. The wall also needs vacuuming badly. Brooms and feather dusters are not adequate. I was in favor of ignoring the next-door radio, and letting the upstairs neighbor listen to it through her floor. Those neighbors sometimes play their radio so loud you can hear it loudly through the two stairway walls. Should I report the upstairs neighbor's junk car which is under a few inches of snow out in front if she calls the police about imaginary noises again? Jim let these latest police know he had been asleep for half an hour when the police woke him up to investigate the 'noise' that had just stopped before she called. They asked how long I had been here. 22 years if you include next door, same landlord. They said this was a lucky landlord and he should appreciate having a 20 year tenant. Nobody had reported us making any noise this whole time. (I reported one next door neighbor who was fixing his car a few feet from my window at 3 am and was impolite when I phoned him about it asking him not to play his car radio full blast while doing his late night repairs. I did not report his marijuana patch in the back yard). Caulk caulk caulk. Plaster plaster plaster.
Sindi, you are documenting activities that demostrate that your complaints are based on who violates the ordinances. It is probably not smart ignore the offenses of one neighbor and minutely report the offenses of the other neighbor. Leaves you really open to a harrassment charge.
We tried to file a harassment charge against the upstairs neighbor who has reported us four times for noise that happened 'before she called', one time of which was while Jim was asleep. We have not actually reported anyone's noise to the police, we just asked them to come out and clarify what the rules were. They only talked to us today. We did report someone trespassing Sunday (on Tuesday, after talking to the landlord who asked us to do that). Jim said the police today asked Jim if he was snoring yesterday. But it was 'banging' that was reported, which 'stopped just before she called' but which we hered the whole time the police were here last night, from the upstairs stairway and front door. I have not reported the continued door slamming all day today, and nobody has reported my Bach Preludes or my vacuuming of the bookshelf.
I hope Cindy or Jim are providing refreshments for the cops who are leafing through their notebooks on that neighborhood alone.
We are offering to let them come in and warm up but we don't have much food here at the moment, having turned off the refrigerator for a while as part of the cleaning cycle after taking the food to Jim's house. I have started mopping up some of the plaster dust but need to vacuum more, a year's worth of dust.
Jim stayed at my apartment last night. He slept from 10:30 to 3:30 and was then kept awake by lots of tromping around and other noises from upstairs. At 5:30 he got to listen to a jazz station from next door, and then at 6:00 it was quiet again, and at 6:30 more tromping and when I came back at about 9:00 the front doors were wide open and there were boxes piled up on the porch of the house next door. The tromping continues. Jim biked to his house to put out a few things for freecycle and brought back a foil covered plate of 'roadkill' (some frozen lettuce and sliced eggs). We plugged the refrigerator back in. Jim left a message with the landlord asking him to talk to the neighbors in the apartment next door explaining that any noise here last Sunday morning and since then was Jim working on the house at the landlord's request, specifically to work Sunday morning before 2 pm because the upstairs neighbor wanted to sleep at 2 pm. If we don't hear from the landlord by 2 pm today he will call the police officer who he reported the trespassing to, let him know it was not the police, and have him talk to the next-door-apt neighbors and explain the problem to them. Mobile lock services charge $84 to rekey a lock plus $2/key. Stadium Hardware charges 94 cents per key ($1 with tax) and $2.50 for the rekeying if you bring in cylinder and key. They are open Sat to 8:30 and Sun 11-5:00. Schlenker's used to do this. I told Stadium Hardware they were wonderful!!!!! Also thanked the most recent police for being good listeners. More news after 2 pm. My CT scan was normal. Jim still needs to pack for Ireland before Wednesday.
We went off to the 'new' house to figure out how to keep it above freezing (7 double fluorescent fixtures = 640 watts, we will try that first) and do a bit of recycling and came back and found the upstairs-next-door neighbor moving cat litter upstairs here (making her the to-be-upstairs neighbor here) and the former-upstairs-neighbor-here moving things to the house next door. She said she would move to the first floor there and the other neighbor was in theory living upstairs (but had taken over the downstairs too). The to-be-upstairs neighbor does not smoke and is walking around very quietly. She is not talking to us today so Jim' won't offer to set up her computer, fax, phone and broadband again like he did next door. She is not talking to the still-next-door-in-back neighbors, who are talking to us and came to apologize for forgetting to buy us juice at the supermarket. The police came around 2:30 and said the currently-next-door-apt neighbors had not been hearing any noises here. The night Jim got woken at 9:30 pm the police officer said two apartments had reported 'banging noises'. I can't imagine who else the upstairs neighbor got to call - she must have faked calling from two places somehow. This would make a good cartoon. I looked up Halidol, one of the drugs the formerly-upstairs-neighbor told me answering machine I should be taking, and it is an antipsychotic drug. One side effect is low blood pressure (hypotension). The landlord said she was in the hospital for two days with blood pressure problems. Her third time this year to be in the hospital for drug-related problems. I then read a bit about what it means to be psychotic. Psychotic people don't have a lot of friends. The new neighbor had two friends helping her move. We have turned my refrigerator back on and need to retape the plastic storm windows. The new neighbor was not paying heat next door because not only were there no storm windows but there were 1" gaps around the windows. So it will cost her a bit more here but be much more comfortable. Same for us, since we can keep the windows closed. THe upstairs furnace was running 90% of the time at 40deg out, and now it is only on about half the time and it is much colder out. Jim reconnected the two ends of one run and plugged 3 large and a lot of smaller holes. He also patched the basement broken windows.
The lights are all on next door upstairs. So much for avoiding stairs if you have carpal tunnel syndrome. The currently-upstairs neighbor is walking around so quietly you hardly know she is there, and going in and out without letting the door closer slam the door. We have a month's laundry to do now that the back basement won't be smoky. We celebrated by walking three miles to Kroger and filling a large back pack with grapefruit and pineapple juice concentrate, and a large package of organic blue corn chips with non-GMO rapeseed oil and low salt, and some sweet potatoes. The Kroger employees are really nice people. The cashier said she likes scanning cases of beer for exercise. She did our 32 cans of juice really skillfully. The guy unpacking cans of tomatoes tried to find us a large size organic tomato paste. The juice unpacker told us how he lost a tooth trying to protect a cashier from shoplifters, and a few other stories of grocery crime.
The furnace room is still so stinky I feel sick after spending 20 seconds in there taking down my laundry. It has two 6" holes to the outside and someone propped open the door to the rest of the cellar. I hear it is pretty bad upstairs. I am offering to put in a clean filter if the upstairs neighbor leaves me one. She talked to us this morning - told us we had to wait to let in the phone company to hook up her phone (he came before we left for the airport) and also told me to call the repairman for her (she forgot I called her to get his number and neither of us have it). How long does an apartment take to stop stinking after a smoker moves out? It might help to scrub all the walls and floors, but that won't clean out the ductwork. First smoker here in at least 25 years, not counting two who went out on the balcony.
Well Sindi, I would say that you probably have a more sensitive sense of smell than most people. Most people I know have gotten rid of the smoke smell from their houses after quitting by re-painting and by steam cleaning the floors, rugs, furniture. I have heard of people replacing the drywall too but that seems a bit extreme to me.
The stinky furniture moved next door. There are no rugs. Maybe it would help if she washed the walls, ceiling, and floors. Painting would just add another stink. I wonder what it would cost to steam clean her ductwork. Jim's kitchen smelled bad for a few days after he microwaved some old beets until they caught on fire.
I think there are companies that clean ductwork for $50 or so.
Everything for People Concerned About Smoking & Nonsmokers' Rights
FIRST on the Internet for Smoking News and Documents
Wash. Post: Ridding A New Home of Tobacco Smoke is Time-Consuming and
Expensive [03/17-2]
Excerpts from: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes -- and in the Carpet and the
Curtains . .
By Cheryl Kenny [7]Washington Post [03/17/05]
It's the unwanted houseguest that just won't leave: the stale,
lingering odor of tobacco smoke. Getting rid of it can be
time-consuming and expensive. Just ask Kathy and David Houle.
Six years ago, the Houles bought a 1947 Colonial in Arlington that had
been owned by chain smokers for 25 years. "We were very nervous that
we weren't going to be able to get the smell out," said Kathy Houle.
Their worries were well founded: It took a year to get rid of the
odor.
The couple stripped wallpaper and washed the plaster walls beneath it,
then painted. They scoured trim, windows, light fixtures. They
scrubbed the mahogany front door, then sealed the wood with tung oil.
They replaced carpeting, the kitchen's linoleum floor and the dining
room's hardwood -- changes they probably would have made without a
tobacco problem -- but the odor persisted.
They turned to professional cleaners, even having their metal window
blinds cleaned and the nicotine-yellowed cords replaced. They hired a
chimney sweep to clear cigarette odor from their fireplace. They even
had their HVAC ductwork cleaned. "Getting the ducts cleaned was key,"
said Houle. "[The cleaners] told me it was some of the worst they'd
seen, filled with black gunk. And they said it was from smoking."
The Houles eventually eliminated the odor, but it took countless hours
of labor and thousands of dollars to do it.
A dingy, nicotine film and noxious smells are only a few of the good
reasons to rid a home of tobacco odors. The smell can bother people
with allergies and other health concerns. It also can discourage those
who are trying to quit smoking.
The stench can even make it harder to sell a house. Chris Rhodes, an
agent with Long & Foster Real Estate, has seen potential home buyers
"turn on their heels" when they get a whiff of tobacco. "If a house is
pristine but smells like smoke . . . that's the buyer's first
impression. There is an incredible link between smell and memory,"
said Rhodes. Odors are unlikely to be a deal-breaker in Washington's
tight market, he said, but they could delay a sale under more normal
circumstances.
Jeff Bishop is a technical adviser for the Institute of Inspection,
Cleaning and Restoration Certification, a nonprofit that certifies
firms and technicians in cleaning and restoration.
Bishop said smoke odors from cigars, cigarettes and pipes (all about
equally hard to get out) are among the most difficult smells to
eliminate. Smoke particles are so small -- about .01 to 1 micron (a
human hair is 75 microns) -- that they penetrate the tiniest spaces.
He outlines four principles for removing any odor, including tobacco:
get rid of the source, clean all surfaces, neutralize remaining odors
and use sealants to cover hard surfaces if necessary.
"Fundamentally, that's it," said Bishop, author of 13 books related to
cleaning and restoration. "You have to get rid of that film of
nicotine to get rid of the odor."
Hard Surfaces
For walls, fixtures and other hard surfaces, Bishop suggests using
cleaners that include an alkaline builder, such as ammonia, and a
glycol solvent (look for a chemical name with "glycol" in it, he
said). Read labels carefully, because cleaners that work on durable
surfaces, such as kitchen counters, may not be appropriate for wood.
For walls and ceilings, washing should be followed by a fresh coat of
paint. Bishop recommends starting with a stain-blocking sealer/primer
such as Kilz. The undercoat prevents nicotine particles, which are
small enough to penetrate latex paint, from bleeding through.
Wood and linoleum floors should be thoroughly scrubbed with
appropriate cleaners.
Porous surfaces
Carpeting should be cleaned by shampooing or steam cleaning. Sometimes
even carpet cleaning isn't enough for tobacco smells, says Jim
Sellers, general manager of ServiceMaster of Arlington. "The padding
under the carpet may have absorbed the odor, and carpet cleaning does
not clean the pad." In that case, carpet and padding may have to be
replaced.
Upholstered furniture should be professionally cleaned and deodorized,
Sellers said, because the wrong cleaner could cause colors to bleed.
As with carpeting, nicotine may penetrate the furniture's padding,
rendering surface cleaning ineffective.
Henry Head, the ServiceMaster production manager who was part of the
team that helped clean the Pentagon after Sept. 11, said dry-cleaning
drapes probably won't eliminate tobacco odor. He suggested that some
porous items, such as lampshades, can be cleaned with a "chem sponge,"
a dry-cleaning sponge often used to remove soot.
Head said normally only the covers of books must be cleaned. The pages
usually will not absorb smoke odors if books are closed and kept in
bookcases.
Heating and cooling systems
Nicotine odors can get into heating and air conditioning ducts. Tom
Keys, president of Atlantic Duct Cleaning Inc. in Sterling, said
removing such odors actually is easier when ducts are dirty.
"The best for us is to have the ducts dirty already, so the odors
[adhere to] the dust, and we can remove them all together." If ducts
are not dust-coated, nicotine sticks to the metal, requiring contact
cleaning -- wiping the surface -- for effective removal.
Ducts lined with fiberglass insulation require specialized cleaning
techniques. Nicotine leaches into insulation, so it is sometimes
necessary to replace the insulation or ductwork to remove the smell,
Keys said.
Smoke particles also can adhere to the inside of chimneys; thorough
cleaning can remove them.
Neutralizing odors
When odors persist after the cleaning is done, it may be necessary to
neutralize them.
There are two ways. One is to apply a chemical opposite of the
material that is causing the odor, usually through a fogging machine
that converts the chemical to a gas for maximum dispersement.
Head questions the effectiveness of those "pairing" chemicals. "To
chemically counteract an odor, you must use an exact opposite," Head
notes. "Since every brand of cigarette is slightly different . . . one
chemical may not be effective in treating a particular brand."
However, IICRC's Bishop maintains that chemical neutralizers cover a
broad enough spectrum of odors to make them "fairly effective."
Bishop and Head agree that ozone oxidation is the most effective way
to neutralize smoke odors. In that process, an ozone generator
converts oxygen into ozone, destroying odor molecules in the process.
High-powered, whole-house generators, which require that everything
that survives on oxygen -- people, pets, plants -- be removed from the
home, floods the home with ozone, usually for three days. The cost is
roughly $300.
TV infomercials and Internet sites hawk products and devices to
eliminate the odor of tobacco. Head, who labels the Internet "the
largest source of misinformation on odor issues," contends that in his
15 years in the business, he has never come across an Internet product
that works.
For households with smokers, Bishop recommends a HVAC air filter that
catches particles as small as 1 micron. Head said ionizers, which
catch particles through an electrostatic charge, reduce airborne smoke
particles but do not remove particles already adhered to surfaces.
For short-term exposure to tobacco smoke, Bishop suggests limiting the
smoker to one room and placing a small fan near an open window to pull
the smoke out.
Smoking outside helps reduce tobacco odor but does not eliminate it:
Clothes absorb the smell, which then transfers to closets and drawers.
[14]Raising Smoking in a Custody Dispute
[15]Smoking in Condos and [16]Apartments
[17]File Complaints Against Smoking
[18]Toxins in Tobacco Smoke
[19]Dangers of Secondhand Smoke
[20]Govt. Rpt. on Secondhand Smoke
[21]Tobacco Class-Action Law Suits
[22]Sue-Big-Tobacco List of Lawyers
[23]Tobacco Settlement, Multistate
[24]ASH's New International Site
[25]Smoking Facts & Statistics
[26]Children and Smoking
Presented as a public service by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH),
2013 H Street, N.W., Wash., DC 20006, USA, (202) 659-4310.
ASH is a 36-year-old national legal-action antismoking and nonsmokers'
rights organization which is entirely supported by tax-deductible
contributions.
Please credit ASH, and include ASH's web address: http://ash.org
I talked to the repairman (asked him to replace the furnace filter so the furnace room will not smell like an ashtray when I hang laundry in the basement) and he said he is painting the upstairs apartment. The windows are open there. It would have been a lot less stinky to just wash the walls. He has no idea why she moved in before he painted. The new neighbor is no more friendly than the old one but at least she does not yell obscenities and pound on the door. I left a polite note asking if my playing piano after 8 pm would interfere with her sleep. (She is unemployed but chooses to sleep from 8 pm to 4 am). I got back a nasty note and a nasty phone message to the effect that of course anyone would object to piano playing at 8 pm when they are getting ready to go to sleep. She is half deaf, and I really wanted to know if she could even hear it without her hearing aid in. The last two neighbors actually told me they liked my piano playing (and the police were never even called about it!). The paint smell is not coming through the ductwork, but I burned the oatmeal this morning so had to open the kitchen door. The neighbor showed up at it and demanded to know what I had done to the water, she had no water. Some questioning revealed low hot water pressure, which is normal around here, off and on. I tried to explain this to her. Then she asked what I was doing with the cardboard box of newsprint she had put in the trash. (I removed it when I transferred some plastic from the front porch paper recycling bin to the can, which had filled since pickup Friday, and was going to recycle it). She told me I should never take anything out of anyone's trash. I told her to go complain to someone else and closed the door. I will ask the landlord to let her know I am not the resident manager (I don't want to be responsible for letting in the phone company, or the water pressure, or if she blows a fuse either). The third apartment may have been taking a shower. The upstairs neighbor should have good pressure at 4 am to 5:30 am (which is when the radio next door went on full blast for 30 min one time when Jim stayed here). Jim expects not to be called again to fix her phone service, her computer, or her fax machine, or to move furniture. I wonder what makes some people so angry at the world. Mary, we never did use your incense, do you want it back?
You could write a collection of short stories about your neighbors!
Feel free to publish with fictitious characters. Did I ever tell you about the feuds between another neighbor and the one upstairs (she insisted on moving her mailbox away from his) or between that neighbor and a previous one next door (#1 did not want #2 to park in the driveway while unloading groceries even though #1 has no car - just in case friends wanted to drive to the door). Or the neighbor who was senile (but friendly) and one day another neighbor came to my door to report that the senile neighbor was last seen headed towards Main St. in a red bathrobe. We both went after her and found her at the store just as her relatives showed up. Or the really crazy neighbor who had two large barking dogs in the back yard (no pets allowed by our landlord) and threatened to shoot anyone who came near, and broke the window of another apartment one night (she said she forgot her key and thought it was her window), and used to have wild parties and blow all the fuses in the house. SHe disappeared suddenly, and the next tenant was getting phone calls (she left her phone and phone account) from the city drug enforcement branch. My landlord is not fussy about security deposits. I am hoping not to have anyone but friends knocking on my door from now on. It is nice and quiet here now. Despite an open window upstairs (paint smell) the furnace is only running half as often as it was when it was 40 degrees out, before Jim reconnected the disconnected ductwork and plugged some holes. My first upstairs neighbor used to juggle bowling balls for fun, at midnight. There was one who used to try to kill herself once in a while. Has anyone else at grex had strange neighbors?
I don't need the incense back, Sindi.
Another neighbor who has been helping this one said she called the police and asked about the legality of removing things from trash cans on private property and was told it was not legal. She apparently did not tell them it was not her private trash can, but one shared by the house. When I called the police out of curiosity and described this as a shared trash can, out of which I had taken a large cardboard box of newsprint to recycle and so I could put my real trash in (on Sunday it was full, after a Friday pickup) the woman answering questions was quite amused and said she thought it was a 'good idea' to recycle paper that I found in my trash can and 'you're fine' legally. The only way to get trash into the two 96 gal cans shared by four people in 3 apartments is to either put it in right after pickup, or remove something that is in there and recycle it, because they are always full of construction trash from the landlord's other house next door. So the nice neighbor may stop helping this one now, but is enjoying the details of the soap opera, 'better than TV'. I wonder who she will get to fix her car and computer for free after this.
I think you should just finally have it out with her over a game of rock/scissors/paper
Have what out? I don't expect to have anything more to do with her.
Yea, except I'm guessing she's not going to let you off the hook so easily.
Off what hook? She can't keep me awake at night because I gave up sleeping downstairs from a kitchen long ago and go somewhere else. It is hardly to her advantage to start a battle of the noises since she does sleep there. I asked the nice neighbor to pass along to her that she should contact the landlord or repairman if she has problems with the water or needs to let the phone company in, not me.
re:trash It is my understanding that once a person puts something into the trash and sets it out at the curb, they no longer own it and anyone can legally come along and take whatever they want. In the case where the bins are on private property to be used collectively, it might be more hazy but I'll bet that since you also have access to those particular garbage cans, it is ok for you to remove stuff. At any rate, as I am sure you already know, your chances of having the cops bust you for it even if it is illegal are about 0%
Someone on the freecycle list wants to come pick up my collection of cardboard boxes, maybe Thursday morning on her way to check out the Kiwanis collection, and the one I took from the trash can is particularly sturdy. Even if it were illegal to remove trash that someone else put into my trash can, I would like to see her prove ownership of the box. Or the newsprint in it. Maybe I should put a 3-way divider into each of the two 96 gal trash cans to reserve my spot, with little plastic name labels for each of us. But then nobody could put in a box that fills the entire can. I am away from it all for a few days at Jim's house to shovel snow here. Nobody is shoveling snow at my apartment this month. I wonder whether she would call the police and accuse me of trespassing on her property if I used the front hall (which Jim spent 5 hours making easier to enter by working on the lock). Then I would not have to walk through the snow and ice to my front porch mailbox.
The soap opera continues. Today I put my trash in the trash can after removing the box of Detroit Free Press again (I recycled it this time, and put the box with my others, next to an identical one) and closed the furnace room door again (which I think legally is supposed to be closed because of city regulations). The friendly neighbor next door in back came over to ask what was going on with the 'bitch' that moved to the front apartment. She kept pounding loudly on the wall that separates her bedroom from his apartment (I told him it was the bedroom - she always chooses the noisiest place to sleep days). I suggested he either ignore it or pound back, and if she called the police to complain about his using the toilet during the ungodly hours of 7 am and 7 pm, to have them come talk to me too. The other room in the front apartment is not next to the rear apartment, and the upstairs apt is still vacant. The other neighbor has not heard from my new upstairs one and expects not to. He will enjoy the continuation of this soap opera, which he says is 'better than TV'.
Did the new neighbor hit on you?
I am confused. Is the friendly neighbor complaining about your former neighbor who smoked or about your current neighbor in that apartment? You should give all of these folks nicknames ;)
Former-upstairs-neighbor-now-next-door-front-neighbor. Former-next-door-upstairs-now-here-upstairs-neighbor. Next-door-back-friendly-neighbor. Across-the-street-used-to-live-in-my-apt-23-years-ago-neighbor. Neighbor #3 (friendly) is complaining about #1 (smoker) pounding. Each house has three apartments. The third triplex is empty and being renovated prior to sale (which explains our trash cans always being full).
Ah. I used to have a neighbor who pounded on my walls a lot when my friends and I were being too loud. Of course we were 18 years old at the time and stayed up all night so we had it coming.
Have you ever had anyone pound on the walls when you used the toilet? The funny part about this is we could hear what was going on upstairs in the bathroom and the bedroom. Oddly enough, we never called the police or even banged on the ceiling with a broomstick. The crazy neighbor has the option of sleeping in the front room that is not next to anyone else, or moving upstairs which is completely isolated. This way someone else could move into the apartment over hers and maybe even do something frightful like go up and down the stairs during the daytime.
No, I never had anyone bang on the walls because I was going to the toilet too loudly for them. I had a roommate once who would get mad if I flushed the toilet in the morning though.
Jim put in something that is pressure assisted, and also has a large chunk of wall missing, and he does not flush it while I am sleeping because the sound travels all over the house. But a gravity-type toilet should not be very audible in the next room.
re #97 Have you ever had anyone pound on the walls when you used the toilet? I had a landlord who rented me her basement apartment and she would stomp her feet at any slight noise from my apartment. One day, half my apartment flooded for no good reason (there was a pipe hidden in a wall which burst) so I told her that her foot stomping broke it.
I hope your rent was low. Basement ceilings tend not to be at all soundproof, since they are often made of paper panels that can be removed to get at the ductwork and plumbing in the ceiling. She could have fixed the problem, in such a case, by putting up drywall. My upstairs neighbor, who twice threw a large box of newsprint in the trash can, put her kitty litter box in the recycling bin (unflattened) and used to complain about other people not recycling, while she was buying plastic bottles to recycle. She also put plastic trash in the bin, which is why I was opening the trash can in the first place.
re #101 It was low rent for me because I shared it with 2 others. The cost of the apartment itself was on the high end.
A Seattle apartment? What is the range now for 1BR apartments?
It was an apartment in Rochester-Utica, Michigan out in the sticks. The range in Seattle for a 1BR apartment can be anywhere between $700-1300+ You can find em cheaper if you know where to look, too. I had a nice 550 sqft efficiency at Zindorf Apts back in 2001 for $600/mo plus $100/mo for a parking spot. That was right on 7th & Cherry downtown where all the action is, too. Right now, there are a ton of condos going up downtown starting in the $300k range on up. Several coworkers are selling their homes and moving into them since its the same amount of floorspace and much more convenient in many ways.
I haven't been in this conference in 2=3 weeks-so it was fun [in a somewhat humerous way] to catch up withthe apartment news. Though I know its not all that humerous for Sindi, though. It doesn't sound like a cool street to live on, that's for sure. I've been lucky with most of my neighbors that I've had while living in apartments. Except I hear some yelling coming from upstairs sometimes; always a mad male voice. And once while sharing a house with someone, I hated her dog. I normally love dogs but definitely not this yipey 15 year old chiwowa [I know that isn't spelled right but since I don't know how to spell it, I'm just writing it phonetically]. This dog used to always go to the bathroom in the living room; it was like a kitty litter box and my housemate didn't care. And once when I had a friend over for dinner, the dog bit my friend [fortunatley it wasn't a bad bite]. But when I told my housemate about it, she acted like it was MY fault that the dog bit my friend--and said that I should've locked the dog up in her bedroom. But I wasn't warned that the dog bites. Anyway, I didn't live in that place for long. So what's the latest in the soap opera saga? And is Jim back home from Ireland yet?
No more news. All quiet here, no smoke. Jim will be back in a month. I had a neighbor in the apt next door with a dog that would bark any time anyone walked by and wake up everyone else in the house when the owner was not there. When he was there he closed the curtain and the dog stopped barking. He put a chair in front of the window so the dog could climb it to look out the window and always left the curtain open when he was not there. His suggested solution was whenever the dog barked we should use his spare hidden key to go in and close the curtain. At 3 am.
I dont know if this behavior annoys my neighbor or not because she has never mentioned it. I think it is funny though. My nextdoor neighbor J. installed a motion detecting light in her backyard. It is really bright and lights up the whole yard. My dog has figured out how to set it off and seems to like to do it. She always runs over to the place where she can set it off whenever she goes out back at night. T., the neighbor on the other side of J. has two dogs that do the same thing! T. and I are on similar schedules so from 7p to midnight the light is constantly going on and off since both T. and I let our dogs out multiple times during that time period. There is also a lot of barking especially when my dog is out at the same time as T.'s beagles who LOVE to bark. I did ask J. if the barking bothered her and she said that it doesnt so that is good at least.
Sindi, this item has been quiet for a couple months now. I take it that things are going a bit better? How are things going at the other house?
The crazy neighbor moved out at the end of January to the landlord's house
next door, claiming that the stairs in the old place were hard on her carpal
tunnel syndrome, and I have no interaction with her. The woman who would have
been her upstairs neighbor moved to upstairs from me and is quiet and does
not smoke. She is also nuts in her own way and I have given up interacting
with her since she blamed me for the water pressure being low ('what did you
do to the water!!!'), ordered me to stay home all morning to let in the phone
company (we were headed for the airport), ordered me to call the repairman
to do that (I don't know his number either, he would not give it to her), and
complained to the police that I had removed and recycled a cardboard box full
of Sunday newspaper. She did not mentin that I shared the trashcan and was
making space to put in my own trash. The police thought it was funny when
I called. She was getting free heat next door because the storm windows were
not working and it was drafty. Now she has all her storm windows off and one
window open since she moved in (February). I have two sets of friendly
neighbors, good enough average.
I'm glad that the new person upstairs doesn't smoke, at least. My parents live in a retirement village in Dearborn [in apartment-style buildings]. One day last week when I went over there, when I got off the elevator and headed down to their place, almost right away, I noticed a pretty strong cigarette smoke odor that went almost the whole length of that floor. I had commented about it to my Dad; he seemed surprised and said that no one on that floor smokes. Though that's incorrect as HE occasionally smokes but tries to hide it from us [just like a kid would; he smokes in the bathroom so he can easily get rid of the ashes and butts]. Even on Saturday when I was there, he was in the bathroom for awhile and the apt then really smelled of smoke. Often, he keeps the door to the hallway open, I guess to air out the place, I guess. Though in previous times going there, I never detected the smell all the way down to the elevators [only within a couple apartments], so perhaps this time, there were other smokers [residents and/or other guests]. I do know, though, that smokers get to the point where they can't smell the smoke anymore. I guess Dad forgets that fact and believes he's still fooling us. No one ever says anything to him. He's 79 and has smoked since he was 17. He's tried quitting a few times, including after emergency surgery in 1990; it's been after this time when he's been hiding this fact...
My neighbor around the corner is now working at getting the smoke smell out of her house. Her nicotine-addict husband spent a week or so in the hospital recently with pneumonia and emphysema, and was discharged with an oxygen tank and no open flames are allowed in their house. He complains a lot now that he is not allowed to smoke. She is washing all the walls and may remove the carpets and have them steam-cleaned. I don't know how to get the smell out of all their books etc. He is being given some new pill containing a nicotine antagonist that is supposed to help the craving without having the other bad effects of nicotine (blood vessel constriction?).
I forget the name of that pill but I know several people who have used it with good success. Some of them had to stop though because of the side effects but even those folks were able to stay on it long enough to break the habit.
Oh wait, I do remember. The name of the pill is chantix
Chantix will give you nightmares.
Do they also get addicted to the pills? I hear methadone is more addictive than heroin.
No, quite the opposite. No one I know has been able to stay on the Chantix for very long. My sister thought it made her too tired. Another friend mentioned the nightmares. Yet another person just felt that it made her life kind of blah. No one thought that the Chantix was pleasant in any way so they have all stopped taking it. It got them over those first difficult weeks though so I would say it has some value.
This response has been erased.
ahs the insense been delivered yet?
*snicker*
You have several choices: