Good air purifier for dealing with smoke in home from neighbour

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I would really appreciate some advice or recommendations for good air purifiers to deal with the smoke smell in our home from the neighbour’s log burner!

Our neighbour has their wood burner going from 7am - 11pm at the moment. It’s in a single story extension so smoke smell from the chimney seems to be worse as coming out lower.

It stinks outside so we can’t open windows and have to rush through external doors to try to minimise smell coming in. But smell comes through windows, doors, loft hatch etc.

We have sealed doors/windows etc but the smell is still there and apart from hating the smell everywhere, I’m worried about how clean the air in our home is!

I would be so grateful for any recommendations!

I'd be contacting your council's environmental health team rather than buying an air purifier.

I am calling them again in the morning I think. I’ve spoken to them before and am keeping a ‘nuisance diary’, but unfortunately it looks like the low chimney falls within planning rules. I will be calling planning though to check.

Am just worried that the number of complaints upheld seems to be very low, so not sure how successful we will be 😔.

Check if you are in a smokeless fuel zone, it could be that the burner they have bought doesn’t comply with the emissions regulations.

It also could be they don’t know how to run it properly as a good wood burner recycles and burns off its emissions to produce less smell, but it can only do so if it’s run hot enough and efficiently with the correct wood.

Unfortunately we aren’t in a smoke free zone. I suspect a lot of the problem is how they are burning, but when we have approached them before they just denied there was any smoke?! They aren’t exactly great neighbours so know any pleas fall on deaf ears.

I’ll maybe mention to council, as their last load of wood came on back of random mates truck and am pretty sure they just keep out in garden, so might be getting too wet also.

Thank you so much for your help

How close is the chimney to your property? There are rules about where they can be installed if your property is close to theirs.

Also with regards to burning wet wood, the new Defra rules around wood being less than 20% moisture may help you here. Any wood sold in volumes under 2m squared must be certified as ready to burn. I don’t know how you go about forcing someone to stop burning wet wood though.

I would take pictures of the smoke as evidence, you might need them later.

Thanks so much. I’ve started taking photos and noting down the times. It stank outside still at 6.30 am this morning!

Crazily enough it seems that you can have the log burner pipe from a single storey extension at lower than property roof height as long as it’s 2.3m away. That’s no distance really! We are the semi next door and technically it is 2.3m away from property. So frustrating and inconsiderate! 😔

I’m not sure how you enforce the dry wood either. Will get some advice I think.

Just seems to be an unlucky mix of chimney height, wood used, length of burning time and inconsiderate neighbours!

Fingers crossed we can get something done! X