Neighbours smelly extractor fan

rachel1000

Hi every one

i hope I’m in the right thread for this but I have a problem for any BUILDERS out there.

we recently bought a house and build an extension. The extension had to come in an inch or two because the neighbours extractor fan sticks out of their extension into our garden. This leaves a gap of a couple of inches between the 2 extensions

wheb Their extractor fan is switched on, the smell of cigarette smoke comes out of it, gets stuck in the gap between the 2 extensions and then come into my house through our walls I’m not kidding you!!!!! My sitting room sticks of cigarettes and it’s really upsetting me

is there any thing I can get to stick onto their fan, like a tube or something to draw the smell away from the gap and out into the air… is there any solution to this? I have a new born baby arriving in 5 weeks abs I’m really upset at the though that we could be breathing in passive smoke!!!

JVince

If you recently built an extension, could you not simply ask the builder that built your extension to look at options. Also, whoever designed the extension should have foreseen an issue and mad changes to the design to avoid the issue.

The one person who is not at fault is the neighbour.

LookingFor

I imagine the success of a retrofit on the neighbour's extractor might depend a lot on things like current weather conditions, wind direction etc. The extractor might be directed one way, but the wind could easily guide it back to your garden.

You could ask your builder about the air tightness of the extension... although maybe this is another part of the home that's older and leakier? Is the smell/smoke coming in through a vent in the room?

Another option would be to look into positive input ventilation. The idea is that if your room or house has a higher air pressure it'll 'push out' air that might otherwise seep in from neighbours or elsewhere. You could even stick an air purifier at the intake to purify the air being pulled in. I did this in my apartment when I was sick of the smell of neighbours' cooking coming in through my vents. Worked a charm for me.

HeidiHeidi

I had a badly placed vent pipe out from my gas boiler which was near a bedroom window - when I was getting the boiler replaced the plumber stuck on another 5 foot or so of pipe at right angles so it now vents up above the roof/gutter line.

Could something like that be tagged on to your neighbour's extractor vent?

Calahonda52

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121275741#Comment_121275741

Re your last line

of their extension into our garden

this is the breach by the neighbour and a failure by the house surveyor for the OP not to point that out as the effect is that it stopped the OP from building what OP wanted due to an intrusion into OP's property.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121362860#Comment_121362860

I agree, bizarre that the issue of the extractor venting wasn't sorted so that the OP could build the extension the full width of the site (or as fully as they wanted to).

However the thing is built now, so that's hardly going to be changed!

Moving the end of the extractor vent out of the gap between the houses is the only solution I can see, and it should be easily enough done.