Breathing: The Adventure Continues
Smoking Dude has been making up for all the time he was away, and making a joke of all the progress I’d made sealing out the smoke. As far as I can tell, the primary source is behind and under the dishwasher, which means moving that in order to seal it. I don’t see myself able to do that without potential problems and contrition. You can actually feel the air flowing through the gap around the dishwasher, and smell the smoke in said air.
Getting the place bearable today involved opening four windows and running the ceiling fans for a few hours. A few hours. Now it’s as bad as ever. We might as well not even have the smoke eaters. If I were sure it would do any good, I’d get another one or two, maybe an even better one than these, if there is such a thing, and run our electric bill up even more to humor the neighbors. The problem is the noise. I am getting tired of hearing from the next room, a dozen feet or so away and around a corner, that Deb is calling out something to me and having to yell back “WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR A WORD YOU’RE SAYING!” or drop what I am doing to step into the same room until she is done talking. And vice-versa.
Anyway, we keep trying to analyze why and how it gets bad when. One factor seems to be if he is there and the parents are not. We surmise that either he just happens to have smoking company, he is smoking in different parts of the apartment, or he is smoking with complete abandon rather than with some constraint associated with their presence. Most likely it’s door number three.
One good thing is I had a friendly chat with the crazy (if not as much as we might have thought) lady downstairs, and even at that point felt almost comfortable enough to mention the problem to her and see if she might have some idea that might help. For all we know, she’d know there’s a particular hole in the wall or ceiling that might be a conduit and could be block on that end.
We so don’t want to move. Right now it’s at “makes me chronically deathly sick” levels, at least. I seem to be holding up better than usual, but that won’t last if it keeps up.
And so the adventure continues. There is yet some poking around I can do to detect problem spots I might be able to fix, and to plug probable contributing leaks. I never did finish sealing around every heat pipe in every room. I wish I had something I could stuff into the crack around the dishwasher that would expand to seal it well, be impervious to airflow/smoke, and yet not be messy or obstructive for removing or working on the dishwasher in the future.
Not to mention that I’m starting to get terribly, terribly nervous about bringing a newborn home to this. At least the smoke stays out of the kids’ room, for the most part. Sigh.
Posted by Deb on 01/04 at 11:59 PMDude. If you’re really that worried, call the landlord. Tell him that unless he can provide a safe and healthy environment for your kiddies you’re put and he’ll have no recourse. AKA either fix it or eat it. I’m sure you’d kick his ass in court if it came to that.
You deserve to live without worrying about your kids’ health.
Smoke that thick is bad for all of you.
Posted by caltechgirl on 01/05 at 01:48 AMI agree with Caltech Girl. You have done what you can to try to fix it. It’s time to get the landlord to move the dishwasher and have him try to fix the leaks.
The only thing that will sound kind of odd, is you need to arrange a time for the landlord to come over when Smoker Dude is chain smoking.
Posted by Will on 01/05 at 06:03 AMWell, the thing is that we weren’t necessarily that worried until the last couple of days. But yeah, it’s time to call, I think, and see if they can help. Because cross my former-smokerdom with my third-trimester mama-bear, and you get one very unhappy Jedi.
Posted by Deb on 01/05 at 07:10 AMwhen they check for air leaks on the home improvement shows they turn on the exhaust fans
and that brings outside air in.
maybe opening windows aggravates it.
They use incense to find leaks and they come in
through switchplates, light fixtures, everywhere.Posted by on 01/05 at 05:20 PM
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