Neighbour Dispute - Cooking Smells - Advice needed

[MaisyMooCow]

We live in a semi detached house. Our neighbour cooks strongly fragranced foods which seem to seep through our walls into our hallway, bathroom and front bedroom. All these areas connect to the party wall. We have another wall separating the staircase from our lounge which seems to prevent the smell spreading further. The neighbours don't have this wall, it was knocked down so their entire ground floor is open plan.

The neighbour doesn't open windows or doors when cooking and they don't have an extraction fan either.

We have to open all upstairs windows to clear the smell. During the summer, if there is a breeze then it clears, however if not it hangs in the air. In the winter we waste so much money heating the house only to end up opening the windows to ventilate.

All this occurs regularly, around 4 times a week and lasts at least 2-5 hours on each occasion.

We tried to speak to the neighbour on several occasions but she's a bit anti-social and never answers the door. We have written her letters asking her to ventilate her property whilst cooking and have told her how it effects us. She wrote back saying it wasn't her fault and if there is a smell in my house then it must be for another reason!

We contacted Environmental Health who said they could only assist if a commercial business was the cause of the problem. They won't get involved in residential/neighbour disputes.

We're at our wits end and feel that the only solution is to take legal action.

Can anyone advise me what legislation or acts are in place which she might be breaching. Someone mentioned the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Is that right?

All we want is for her to show some consideration and work with us by ventilating her property.

Sorry for such a long post!

Our neighbour used to cook something that had a whiff of rotten leather (not actually sure what rotting leather smells like). I feel for you.

My bedroom is a no go area when she's cooking. I was having a lie in the other weekend and the smell started seeping through at about 9.30/10am ish. I had no choice but to get up.

I'm serious! People have in the past...after murders and things said "I did smell something bad...but we never thought it was THAT!"

But I am quite a dramatic person.

But..... how old is your house? Does it have old fireplaces? If it was built with the intention of having open fires in the living room and bedrooms so 1920s to late 1960s it could be that they have been 'sealed' so they have been decorated over but not made airtight. Often adjoining houses shared chimney stacks. Not so you could see but they shared the flue from ground floor to the bedrooms. That could account for the gap that is letting the smells in. And it would also let CM in so worth checking it out.

Sorry, meant 1900s or before to late 1960s.

It was built in the 1930s. The chimneys are on the other walls so it can't be that.

Just googled this from aother forum...a DIY one

Are your kitchens on single story extensions, and next to each other?

The reason I ask is that the most common defect in a party wall that could give rise to this is a lack of fire break in the roof space.

It appears that the smells are escaping into the roofspace or void in one house and finding their way through a similar route into another.

Time for you both to investigate whether chimneys/flues etc have been effectively capped off. It is quite likely that you may have both shared chimney stack in the past, with separate flues, which have deteriorated and are now leaking into one another.

Our kitchens are on the ground floor and are the furthest rooms apart from each other. She has knocked down her internal walls though so all her cooking smells will circulate around the entire ground floor and up the open plan staircase.

Sorry don't mean to worry you about CM but I have really never come across this before. The fireplace thing only occured to me cos we could smell a dead pigeon - as we later found out - behind next door's fireplace, we couldn't see anything at the back of ours. It was only when they told us that we realised about the old open fire/shared chimney thing. Sadly my DF had died by then or it wouldn't have taken me so long to work out.

Thanks Buster. What you say is well worth checking out though. You can't mess about when it comes to CM.

So they could be getting into your house through the roofspace?

Possibly, but would that account for the ground floor smelling before it hits the bedroom and bathroom? The hallway and stairs are always the first to get it and smell the strongest.

I've looked up in the loft and there's a solid brick fire wall between us. Maybe it's weak?

Agreed Maisy well worth checking out. We got a CM detector from Asda for about £15. Well worth it.

Sounds awful what you're going through. Hope you get it resolved soon.

Thanks Buster

internal brickwork is usually very shoddily done because it will be plastered over and not show. There will be open joints and cracks between floors and ceilings. If you take the boards up you can clean the dust out and pack them with mortar or inject with expanding foam. You can also pack the space under the floorboards with loft insulation to suppress airflow.

if the joists in your house run from side to side (so the floorboards run from front to back) then the joists will be built into the brickwork and again there will be gaps. Expanding foam will fill them but hoover the dust out first and wet with a garden sprayer to make it stick.

if you have back to back fireplaces the wall betwen may only be half a brick thick and is probably cracked.

Finally, by creating overpressure in your house, you can cause air to flow through any cracks or gaps into her house and out of yours. You can do this by opening windows on the windy side of your house so it blows in, but not on the other side so it can't get out. You can also get a Lofty ventilator that blows air into your house from the loft (they are usually used to prevent draughts). The air at the top of the stairwell will usually be fairly hot, due to heat rising, so it does not make the house cold. You can also do it with a powerful Vent Axia if it is a reversible one. It will need to be at least nine inches.

Do not run extractor fans as they will tend to suck air in through any gaps.

It's a though she's boiling a rancid corpse. Seriously.

Environmental health should get involved with nuisance smells coming from neighbours houses if it's not cooking smells. --> or if the cooking is done on a commercial bases
Also, if you could get your neighbour to agree you could try and find out how the fumes are getting into your house by lighting a smoke bomb the dence but harmless smoke will show where there are gaps between the two properties. (you should do his for fire safety and pest control reasons anyhow)
What about offering to install an extract fan for her, I know it is not your responsibility but they are not too expensive and may be worth it to get rid of the disgusting smell.

We have this exact same problem. The smell lingers in pockets of rooms and so we can never properly get rid of it. I take books from bookshelves and the smell comes out. Our neighbours don't seem to ventilate either. It's a very tricky situation and difficult to address. I use a lot of air freshened and ventilate as much as possible but it drives me mad.

But it sounds like you're doing this already. Wish I had a solution to give

most likely not actually comming through the wall but the joist that go into the wall for floors and ceilings sometimes when houses are built these are not thoughly cemented intoplace and small gaps are there which will allow smells through from one semi to another, you only need the smallerst of gaps to allow the smell to come through , best i can suggest is to take up a few floor boards and have the joists re sealled in and this should do the trick. or vastly impove the situation. there is no legal redress in this against the neighbour.

Hello

Have same problem from people below me. Going to try 'Prices Chefs Candles'. It's such an intrusion of my flat and my life within the flat. I always feel invaded.

Hope things are better for you now

nellynelson

We live on top floor, recently a family from Bangladesh moved in ground floor. The food smells are making me sick... They cook day and night and a lot of times they start cooking at 2pm in the morning and the smell is all over my flat. I can't sleep I'm forced to go out for fresh air. I have lived in this flat for about 8 years and never had this problem with other tenants who use to live on the ground floor. I fill I been forced to leave the flat because of 24 hrs cooking smells, also the smoke detecter goes off every night late. I'm sick and tired having to leave my flat to get fresh air at 2pm in the morning....i wonder how many bags of onions a day they eat...50kg a day? I need to get out.

@Alex8282

Sounds to me like they are batch cooking.
My MIL had them same problem and it turned out the neighbours were batch cooking for a local 'well respected' Indian restaurant.
If this is the case, they are using the property for a commercial venture and you may be able to seek redress that way.

Same for the OP?

Dear MaisyMooCow you mentioned that the offending party is Nigerian in my experience this is a dead give away your neighbour is cooking what’s colloquially known as bush meat-i.e. small marsupials and lower order apes all from their native country this is an illegal trade involving smuggling and to use, import or source such meat is a criminal not civil offence the meat is often dried and semi rancid before cooking (hence the smell) unfortunately you would need to prove they are purchasing/preparing such products -try scouting your area for a recently opened shop selling (traditional west African cuisine)this was the source in my area you will still struggle to get local authority to act as they are likely terrified of being branded racist or culturally insensitive-ignore others comments regarding "its food how bad can it be" I know from personal experience just how demoralising it can be to have such neighbours also you need to demand action from your land lords who ever they are as they have a duty to ensure your residence is habitable-good luck.

Did you ever find a way to resolve this? I have the same issue with a neighbor and it is driving me crazy. I tried to ask them nicely to use their vent above their stove but they refuse :( It's horrible! Every time they start cooking, if I'm asleep, the rancid smell wakes me up! I can't stand it!

Did