I just moved into an apartment, the apartment has a smoky smell like it had a daily smoker in it for a few years. I’m planning washing and painting the walls and cleaning the carpets but the apartment has a popcorn ceiling which I can’t clean or paint. I interested in looking into air cleaners. If you google anything close to air cleaner or air purifier you get a bunch of low quality sites and voodoo science (negative charged ions, oxygenation, ect.).
Anybody got the straight dope on air cleaners; I’m especially interested in ones that have helped in hotels or other commercial uses.
With a popcorn ceiling, it’s unlikely you’ll get the smell out. You’re gonna have to replace the smell with another. I am assuming you have tried things like Fabreeze and Lysol.
I stayed in a nonsmoking hotel once in Monterrey (I think it was the Intercontinental, just a block from the aquarium), and when we checked into the room it reeked of smoke. I complained, they comped us a couple drinks in the hotel bar so we’d be out of the room for a couple of hours, and when we got back the air smelled a bit ozone-ish but the smoke smell was gone.
Thus, my advice: call some higher-end hotels and see what they use. Also find out whether you can rent a machine from them or their supplier. I don’t know how much good it will do you on a place where the smoke has seeped into the walls and ceiling over the course of years rather than hours, but it’s worth trying. Good luck; it’s a terrible smell to live with.
I have to say my mom was a smoker growing up so the smell is something I can get used to unless i go away for multiple days and then come back. The big problem is when I have company over, I don’t want the first thing my guests to smell is the smoke.
Ion generators and such are worse than useless. They don’t work (in terms of cleaning air) plus they have a tendency to generate ozone which is quite harmful. They either have flawed designs and produce ozone straight out of the box or will eventually go wonky and then start trying to kill you. Consumer Reports is always down on these things.
If you don’t mind incense smell try NagChampa… It is a super strong incense that covers up quite a few odors… might have burn a few boxes of it before it masks the cigarette smell though… get the kilo box if you can find one… that should do it…
(My mother in law used to give us these dinky little “air purifiers” about the size of an iron, for Christmas, every year. Totally useless, but she ordered them through some catalog for about $20 each and felt good she got something so ‘useful’ and inexpensive. So those are no good.) And my two-pack a day friend burns candles, sprays stuff around, and has plug-in things in every outlet. So her apartment smells like cig smoke AND cheap flowery Glade spray.
I’m sorry, but that smell is just soaked into the ceiling and unless you have it repainted or something, there’s really nothing you can do. There are companies that go into a house after there’s been a fire and clean and remove odors, but it’s probably really expensive.