Living in a typical panel apartment building always means having to tolerate some minor noises from neighbors. You get used to footsteps above your head, the occasional flush, or a dog barking in the hallway. But what you simply cannot tolerate is when someone fills your own apartment with a pungent smell. Three years ago, we completely renovated our third-floor apartment. We put in new tiles, clean wall coverings, and installed a quiet exhaust fan with a backdraft damper in the bathroom with the toilet, so we would always have fresh air at home.
Everything worked perfectly until this spring, when a new tenant moved into the apartment directly below us—a man in his forties. We soon found out he was a heavy smoker. To avoid stinking up his freshly rented living room and to keep from having to go out on the balcony or outside in the cold, he found an incredibly inconsiderate shortcut. He got into the habit of smoking in the bathroom.
He would sit on the toilet, turn on the little fan, and blow smoke straight into the service shaft. But in a panel building, air flow is a tricky thing. The shared utility shaft acts like a giant chimney, and if there’s any overpressure, the smoke will find even the tiniest gap around pipes and seals. Within a few days, our bathroom and toilet turned into a cheap, smoky lounge. The stench of strong, cheap tobacco was so intense that it spread through the slightly open door into the hallway and even into the bedroom. In the morning, I’d walk into the bathroom to brush my teeth and immediately feel sick. Freshly washed towels and bathrobes hanging on the rack soaked up the cold cigarette smoke so badly, they had to go straight back into the washing machine.
We endured it for a week. He smoked at six in the morning, at noon, after work in the afternoon, and had his last cigarette around midnight. When the smell became unbearable, I went down one floor and rang his doorbell. He opened the door with a cigarette in hand, and a cloud of smoke billowed out from his apartment.
I calmly and politely said to him: “Hello, neighbor, you’re smoking in the bathroom and the smoke is coming straight up to us through the vents. Our towels stink, we can’t breathe in there, and it’s getting into our apartment. Could you please smoke on the balcony or go outside in front of the building?”
He looked me over indifferently, blew smoke past my head into the hallway, and dryly replied: “Sir, I pay rent for this apartment, I’m in my own private space, and I can do what I want in my bathroom. Buy yourself an air freshener and stop bothering me.” Before I could say anything else, he slammed the door in my face.
I realized that a normal neighborly agreement wasn’t going to work here. Instead of arguing with him in the hallway, I started acting on two fronts. First, I contacted the owner of the apartment he was renting. I sent him a message explaining that his tenant was smoking in unventilated areas and polluting the whole building, which was a serious violation of the house rules. The owner was very unpleasantly surprised, since the lease agreement specifically prohibited smoking indoors out of concern for damaging the newly painted walls.
The second step was technical. I opened the inspection door to our utility shaft, bought some expanding foam and special silicone sealant, and carefully sealed every microscopic gap around pipes and cables where air from the shaft could get into our apartment.
The apartment owner gave the tenant a clear warning, threatening immediate eviction with no compensation. The guy realized he’d crossed the line and had to stop smoking in the bathroom immediately. Now I see him standing outside in front of the building in the cold with his cigarette. Our bathroom is clean and fresh again, but it was a clear lesson for me that when it comes to inconsiderate behavior in an apartment building, the only thing that works is firm pressure through the property owner and properly sealed walls.
