How To Smell Proof A Bedroom Door

How To Smell Proof A Bedroom Door

Smell Proofing a House

None of This Worked. It Helped, But it Didn't Stop the Toxic Smoke or the Sickening Smell

This post describes some of the "mitigation" work I did to the unit in my house that I live in — that is, the efforts I made to "air proof" the rooms. For all this work, at best I slowed down and reduced the severity of the smoke infiltration, but I was not able to eliminate it. It remained severe enough to continue to interfere with my life, my sleep, my ability to function.

This is also only 3 rooms t hat take up 3/4th of the floorspace of the basement, in a 3 level, 3 unit house that contains 2 other 3-bedroom apartments. There's no way I could even start to air-proof the other apartments, let alone maintain such air-proofing, in order to make them rentable. Together, that's cost me roughly $5,000/month in rental income alone, over the course of nearly 5 years.

Tape and construction adhesive just barely held the plastic in place. It came loose several times. It was never a strong enough seal to be air-proof, let alone smell-proof, but it did keep the garage much warmer in winter.

Sealing the subfloor with caulk. The smoke gets into the structure of the house, so I had to seal every inside opening, from plumbing and electrical openings, ceiling lights, to the floor itself.

View from the garage. Note, at the bottom, that I tried to seal this flimsy, inside door with weather stripping. It didn't work very well. In fact, the door came off its hinges, and I had to reattach it with construction adhesive.

My living room, and the door to my garage. That's the computer that was bricked by the Home Depot smoke removal spray (see below)

The orange stuff is Great Stuff (fire-block) foam, and the white is caulk to try to seal around it. (The other white stuff is Rust-O-Leum spray that I tried to seal the seams with before I used caulk, hoping it would seep deeper into the seem.)

I covered all the other electrical outlets, and ran extension cords from this one

Many of the radiator grills got bent up like this. (Others rusted into dust from the vinegar) I also caulked over the screws that held the radiator plate to the wall.

I covered all the other outlets and light switches, and the ceiling lights like this. This is a sheet of plastic taped with packing tap, and sprayed over with Rust-O-Leum. Before that, I had just tried caulking around the outlet, hoping I could still use it. (And yes, the VoCs from that spray are also toxic and sickening. It's not meant to be used inside like this.)

I cut a hole in the wall to see if I could seal the space behind it with foam. I couldn't, at least not with any expectation of it being smell-proof.

Lots of foam and caulk where the heating pipe entered the wall. Is this even fire-safe? Probably not…

The other side of my living room, also showing the plastic over the living room window to the right. The black plastic bags hung with tape served as my "curtain." Such elegance.

I initially tried cutting through the carpet to find the subfloor seams (look to the right). When that didn't work, I just pulled the whole carpet off it's nails and rolled it up.

My Front Door. My car is just on the other side of this door, but my only egress from the apartment was through the garage, into the furnace room, then upstairs to the first floor apartment, out it's back door to the driveway, and down the outside steps. Fire safe? Probably not. Pain-the-butt? Definitely.

Sealing the corner where it went down to the floor

This door and all the windows — kitchen, living room, bedroom — are all covered like this. Still the smoke gets through.

I spent $540 on Ozium in bulk at ~$5/can. When Ozium rose to $20+/can, I found that spraying vinegar into the air almost worked. But not really…. Not at all against marijuana, and not when the cigarette smoke was constant.

I bought vinegar 12 gallons at a time, then diluted it by 1/2. That lasted ~2-3 months. Looks like I need make another trip to Target. (The blue tank is water storage from the reverse osmosis water filter.)

You also see the Home Depot "Smoke Oder Remover" here, mixed in with the Ozium. That stuff leaves a coating of disgusting slime on *everything*, and it shorts out electronics. I lost a laptop, a monitor, a whole computer, and several other electronics to it. The touch control panels on my dishwasher, scale, and air filters also became partially non-functional. It's the only thing that works against marijuana though — not vinegar, and not Ozium.

That's not to mention that both the Home Depot stuff and the Ozium are themselves toxic (with phthalates and fragrances and who-knows-what else). At least they don't smell as bad (because they're fragranced with chemicals that knock out your ability to small for a time).

This used to be efficiently packed …

… when I took most of my stuff out of this unit and moved it upstairs to access the walls and windows, it took up two bedrooms and a large living room. (The one advantage of having vacant units.) Most of my kitchen gear was unusable, because there was no place to keep it anymore.

Also, at one point, those powdered protein and shake mixes you see on the top shelf literally absorbed the smoke, so they *tasted* like smoke. As if the smell weren't sickening enough, can you imagine what smoke *tastes* like? I lost several hundred $$ of them that way.

And yes, I have two large refrigerators. I used to eat a lot of vegetables/greens, and I needed that space to store them in bulk, especially when I was working 60+ hour weeks and had limited time to shop, let alone prepare food.

The black tape on the floor is where I had to cut through the tile, to seal the space between the floorboards, like what's pictured above.

You can also just barely make out the cardboard Amazon box just past the bookshelf, sitting on top of the tubes of caulk and construction adhesive. That's my bathroom. I had to take out my bathroom sink and vanity in order to seal the opening behind it and the pluming from the smoke that passed through the structure of the house, so I've not had a real bathroom in years. In that box I kept a comb, toothbrush, deodorant, Q-tips… and somehow made due with that.

I had to remove the kitchen shelves in front of these windows, in order to try to seal them.

The vinegar made every piece of metal in the house rust — iron/steel, chromium, aluminium, copper. I bought these shelves in 2005, and they lasted 18 years, until I started spraying vinegar in the air to try to take out the smoke.

The smoke got into the structure of the house, so I had to seal every opening in the inside walls.

I occasionally had to cut the plastic to access the electrical fuses. Then I had to try to seal it back on itself.

The other side of my front door, with the refrigerator pulled forward for access.

Notice also the rust on the heater, also from the vinegar. That's relatively mild because it's protected by the refrigerator.

The caulk wasn't working — it doesn't stick very well to the PVC or the black side of the Gorilla Tape. So I replaced it with hot-melt glue. That still didn't prevent smoke from coming through. There were always small leaks, that I could hear air whistling though, but could never find. Occasionally, if I put my head close enough, I could feel the air on my cheek. But only sometimes, and never on my hand.

The nails in the wall literally rusted through the paint from the vinegar, and then let smoke through. So I covered them with caulk or hot-melt glue when I found them. Notice also the light switch — one big gob of caulk, now covered with hot-melt glue as well.

This is the wall that separates the bedroom and the kitchen. Smoke smell comes in at the top, and falls to the bottom, so the space at the bottom needs to be sealed (just like under the heaters). But the kitchen has cabinets built against the wall, so after trying a number of other things, I found that I just had to tear the wall off and seal the structure itself.

Looking the other way. The plastic covers the back side of the stove, and blocks light coming through when I try to sleep. The other plastic (on the right) is the bedroom window, sealed with plastic like the other windows above.

The house's main sewer pipe. I had to seal around it, where it goes through the floor, into the foundation. I used Great Stuff, then tried to pour a Rust-O-Leum-like liquid over it, but the liquid melted the Great Stuff. So I just smeared caulk over everything.

I also had to seal where the pipe goes through the kitchen wall to the sink. Note also the copper rust — that's from the vinegar spray.

View from the other direction. That dresser is my one remaining piece of bedroom furniture, and I had to take it out while I was sealing the floor anyway.

My other electrical outlet, and the water pipe to the sink.

Behind the bedroom door — all along this wall, I had to seal the bottom as well, because air circulates though the several layers of wood and plastic under the sub-floor. I used a mix of Great Stuff (orange), that rubber liquid, and caulk.

All from the vinegar — iron rust on the heater, and the aluminum grills are rusted through. They crumble into dust if you touch them.

I also caulked around the pipes as they entered and exited the walls.

How To Smell Proof A Bedroom Door

Source: https://medium.com/@SmokeInfiltrationWestHarrison/air-proofing-a-house-8dece40de69c