best way to eliminate smoking odors?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

i just moved into a new apartment (2nd floor, really nice old house, 2 actual rooms for $50 more than my old place) and overall it’s a nice place, yes the floors are a little uneven (gives it character) and the refrigerator is somewhat small (but there’s a Hannaford’s grocery store 1/2 mile down the road), the only real problem is the downstairs neighbor is a chain smoker, so there’s always a faint odor of ciggarette smoke in the air (or maybe the previous tenant smoked…)

anyway, the “heated oil” thingies (the Lysol one that fits in an Airwick heater) and the Oust Fan are only temporary stopgap measures, and only mask the odors

short of getting downstairs neighbor to stop smoking (it’s not my place for a new tenant to demand an old tenant to quit smoking), is there an effective way to eliminate the smoke odors?

are those “Ionic Breeze” things really worth it or is it electronic “snake oil”, i know in theory that air ionizers should work, but i tend to be skeptical about anything that promises miraculous results in minutes…

what’s the most effective way to destroy smoke odors?

2

Many moons ago, when I worked in a theatre, we used Ozium to attack bad smells. Be careful using it, but it did a very good job. Check around online for it.

3

Mac, I’ve been a landlord for a number of years. I often get complaints similar to yours about pet and smoking odors. The best advice I can give is:

  1. clean the carpets
  2. wash the walls
  3. use Clorox tablets in your toilet tanks.

A decent carpet cleaner if your landlord won’t pony up for cleaning the carpets is the Bissel ProHeat model. Less than $300USD, and does a great job. This removes lingering odors from the carpets, which can be a major culprit in stinky situations. If you don’t want the expense of buying a personal carpet cleaner; then best of luck renting a Rug Doctor or such. Often those rental machines are quite beaten up and abused, and don’t always give the best reward for the effort given. Washing the walls and woodwork with TSP can remove smoke odor, if it came from the previous tenant. Using Clorox tablets in the toilet tanks can help to remove on-going odors wafting in from outside. Bleach is a great deoderant.

I hope this helps.

4

Febreeze always does the trick when I want to get odors out of fabric, carpet, and stuff like that. In fact I used it on a van that I borrowed from my Sis-in-law who is a chain smoker. It got out the smell quite well. They are now making a Febreeze that is an air freshener as well.

Link, linkity link, link!

5

Well, i answered my own question, do the ionic air cleaners work for eliminating smoking odors?

the answer is an emphatic YES, i went to the local Brookstone outlet store in Kittery, Maine and picked up 2 Ionic air cleaners, the “ESP” tabletop modeland the floor standing Pure-Ion (a refurbished last-years model, the only thing the new one has that the refurb doesn’t is the fancy control panel and “cleaning” light)

back at the parents house, i put the ESP on the table, turned it on, lit a match then blew it out…

the smoke was drawn to the ionized ring and was captured, no smoke escaped

i then lit a scented candle and put it behind the ESP…

from the back , you could smell the candle, but if you smelled the air passing thru the ESP, all you smelled was the faint “clean” smell of ozone, , i blew out the candle, and as with the match, the smoke was drawn into the ring and captured

i also grabbed some stray cat hair on the rug and held it near the ion generators, just like the smoke, the cat hair was captured by the metal ring, the smaller ESP model was a complete success, but i had to wait to get back to my apartment to test the floorstanding model

i set up the Pure-Ion on the floor in my main room and turned it on and set the internal fan to high, turned on the UV sterilizer lamp (hey, what can i say, i’m a technician, i love gadgets)

there was no smell of ozone coming out of the P-I so i was dissapointed at first, i had no way of telling that it was working, the ESP model is very obvious when it’s working, you can smell the clean scent of Ozone when it’s running

about 20 minutes later i noticed that the air in the room seemed somehow cleaner and brighter, the stench of tobacco smoke was rapidly diminishing, as i type this now, i can smell no tobacco smoke, the air just smells clean

another cool thing i found out about the tabletop ESP model is that the 3 ion generator needle tips actually glow a faint bluish-white when active, it’s only visible in a dark room, still, i think it’s a rather cool feature, i like electrical glowy things…

the Pure-Ion also looks rather cool in a dark room when it’s UV sterilizer is lit, you see a faint bluish-white glow from the UV lamp thru a window set into the top of the machine

the best part is that since these machines were from the outlet store, they were a lot cheaper than on the Brookstone website or regular brick and mortar store, the ESP was $30 (normally $100) and the Pure-Ion was $115 (normally $300)

i may have to pick up a few more ESP’s the next time i’m back at home, one in the fishroom, one in the kitchen, and one for work

6

Try to find some Fire D.

I used to sell this stuff. I had a contractor use this is a building that had suffered a fire. He said that, after using this product, you’d never know there was fire depsite the fact that you were looking at charred walls.

I’ve had landlords use this in apartments where the previous tenants were heavy smokers and it did a great job.

7

Ozium works wonders for the getting rid of smoke smells. It can be easily obtained in the car care aisle of any large Target-type store. Regular scent will work the best for your purposes. First (this info is from my sister who is a smoke and has lived in many apts.) you will want to clean the carpet and walls. Then use the ozium on your way out one day. Do not use it like Lysol. It’s not an air freshener. Oh yeah, Try burning some Nag Champa incense. That stuff will get rid of any unpleasant odor.

8

I’ll keep an eye out for both of those sprays, but i’d rather not rely on chemical based deodorizers, if i understand it correctly, you’re simply masking an unpleasant odor with a pleasant one, the ionizers actually capture the unpleasant particles so they can be removed

and considering that the guy in the downstairs apartment’s a chain smoker (and, ironically, a fireman…) there’s always going to be a source of smoke odor (at least until he gets lung cancer or something and is forced to quit)

personally, as an aside, i’ll never understand why anyone would want to suck on a paper tube filled with burning leaves, nicotine, the addictive ingredient in tobacco, is actually a rather effective insectiside, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, lets inhale burning insectiside…

of course, this is coming from a nonsmoker who has no desire to start…

reminds me of some skit some comedian did a while ago about Columbus returning from the New World with tobacco and coffee…

“this is coffee, a drink made out of roasted beans”
<the king snickers in amusement>
“and this is tobacco, used by the natives in their ceremonies”
<king> well, i suppose if you can get someone to drink a beverage made out of beans, it should be no problem for then to stick burning leaves in their mouths <snicker>

it loses a lot in the translation, but i feel that it sort of covers the whole absurdity of the thing…

hmm, was it a Black Adder skit, sounds like something you’d hear on that show…

9

Zeolite. It’s a volcanic mineral that will take the smell of anything out of anything. We used it once in a house where someone had died in July and went unnoticed for the weekend! It’s really good on smoke. Our Fire Dept. recommends it.

It can be found in pounches at hardware and pet stores. Inexpensive and it doesn’t were out. Just “de-odorize” it in the sunlight every once in a while. Totally natural and non toxic.

10

Oh come on MacTech don’t tell me you don’t know that Frog’s breath will overpower any odor. It is kinda bitter though make sure to have some wormswort handy :slight_smile: