Neighbour's smoking?

[annoyedatscar]

Please read before jumping to conclusions.

New neighbours moved in to the flat below us; we have the upstairs flat, they have the downstairs (I think it was a big house divided up). They're nice but they smoke indoors and the smoke is coming up through and making our flat reek. I cannot stand the smell of cigarettes or tobacco, it makes me nauseous. DH says that there's nothing that we can do and to be honest, I'm not even sure what I'm BU about. AIBU I guess to think that this isn't on? DH doesn't want me to speak to them about it but I literally cannot live like this.

No you can't speak to them about it. You can try your landlord perhaps about tying to seal places it might be seeping in.

We had the same in the past but an upstairs neighbour, so wasn't too bad. But you can't stop them doing what they want in their flat.

@LadyDanburysHat we don't have a landlord, we own, as do they.

Coming up through where?
Think your DH is probably right on this one.

Also I have plug-in air conditioners on but they don't mask the smell, I can smell both the air conditioner and the smoke.

@Catapultaway I don't even know, it's a strong smell in our bedroom and the bathroom. Glad it's not my DC's rooms but I don't like them being able to smell it either. I feel sick in my own room and it doesn't seem fair.

If it's an old conversion their may be vents through the structure. You could get these sealed up.
But unfortunately, they are doing nothing wrong, so it's on you to resolve I think.

I lived above a hairdressers and the smell came up through gaps. The flat reeked of hair treatments, it was horrible. I got some expanding foam and blocked up all the gaps I could find and that fixed it.

If you can smell cigarette smoke and your windows are closed you might well have an issue with fire safety. There are companies which will seal gaps in your flooring and ventilation which should reduce the problem - Radon gas specialists can do this. The worst offenders are timber floors with no carpets, but smoke can come from air vents, too.

Air filters can also help.

If it's rented, they are almost certainly in breach of their rental conditions.

We don't have any vents or extractors so I don't think it's that, except the one above the oven but the smell isn't in the kitchen. Annoying to have a bathroom without one but can't have everything.

Both own the property. I've looked round the bedroom and I cannot see any gaps. The smell is really bad today and I can't sleep in it like this.

Look at it another way - there are obviously gaps between flats for you to be able to smell the smoke. Looking at it another way this means your fire protection barrier is compromised so needs attention. You can’t stop them looking in their own house so you need to look at sealing yours.

This really.

Might not seem it, but essentially they're doing you a favour. If the smell is coming through the building, you have some issues to sort.

We had awful neighbours (a whole other thread!) and they smoked continuously inside. It seemed to gather up in the loft and then seeped it's way down into our house. All our upstairs absolutely stank. It was awful but there was nothing we could do. Luckily for us we had put our house up for sale the week they moved in so we weren't stuck with them for long!

Have you spoken to the neighbours? They may be mortified and change their behaviour, or assist with remedial works.

Not all smokers are automatic arseholes, neither are they psychic. You can't make them stop smoking but it's amazing how far maintaining good relationships with neighbours can take you.

My block of flats would be a nightmare if we didn't all talk to each other.

Unless there is a covenant concerning your building that smoking is not allowed inside the premises then there is nothing you can do about it, smoking is legal, it’s their home to do as they wish inside. Every so often there is this exact thread usually with a slight difference, either the neighbour is smoking on their balcony or in their garden, but the answer unfortunately always is that smoking is still legal. However it becomes just pages and pages of people trashing smokers about how evil and disgusting they are, you wait they will be along soon, you may even want that. However these smokers are someone’s mothers/fathers/sons/daughters/nans etc, they are human, probably very nice people and living their life legally as they always have done. Unfortunately if you can’t stand it you’ll have to move.

You're going to have to try and tackle it your end I think.

I suspect its coming up through their ceiling and then your floorboards. Old properties will have loads of gaps in the floor boards. Can you take up the flooring and put something non permeable as a barrier? When we had new flooring fitted the floorer laid on top of our floor boards some sort of plastic layer to make it completely level (overkill I know!). Something similar might block the majority of the smells.

If you have shared chimneys then thats another route for smells, but I assume you would have mentioned that.

Their home their rules. If you can't put up with it move.

I don't think there's anything you can do, they're entitled to smoke in their home, it's not illegal.

Just one of the annoyances of living in a flat, along with unwanted noise.

OP the advice about likely gaps is good, especially as this is a converted house, they're often not done to a high standard.

More broadly, I keep seeing people bemoaning on MN that we should live more densely, more of us should live in flats etc to resolve the housing crises and not build on green belt, but then you also get responses like now saying suck it up. Same thing when that poor person posted at the end of their tether about the autistic teen making a racket.

This is why people want detached houses. Who the hell wants to hear/smell other people?

I once lived in a very large victorian house which had been converted into multiple flats, sometime in the 80's.

I think building regs were laxer then as the standard of the conversion was quite poor. I don't think any thought had been put into having multiple households in the same building would be like for those living in them. The partitioning seemed to be done purely on the basis of what was easiest to do and gave the most amount of additional flats. There were living rooms above bedrooms, bathrooms above living rooms etc.

We didn't get smells from other flats but the sound insulation was almost non existent, we could hear everything going on in the upstairs flats.

@AnotherCunningPlan I had that in a terrace that was maybe 30 years old. When someone jumped up and down next door, the floor bounced in my adjacent room because the floors were large boards going between all the terraces.

You could hear them sneeze or flick a light switch.

Modern building recs are shit mainly imo. I don't believe new builds are any better.

Give me my 1930's detached any day.

You have my sympathy, I would hate this and really struggle with it as I detest the smell of cigarette smoke. Unfortunately, you cannot ask them not to smoke in their own (stinky) home, I'd be calling out a specialist asap to seal your flat & do everything to try and stop the stench seeping through. Otherwise literally everyhing in your flat is going to reek and you'll never get the smell out.

Any update to this?