TL;DR: what are your tricks to keep the interior air of a house pleasant when living in a stinky locale?
For the next couple years, I am stuck on land* in a house that is occasionally downwind from a paper mill. Holy hell, the smell can be eye-wateringly bad when the winds blow just the wrong way. The house is ~1700 square feet with HVAC.
*I normally live on my sailboat and move around at will.
I have an ozone generator for serious de-stinking, but wow ozone is nasty even in small quantities. I have a Corsi-Rosenthal box, but that does nothing for smells. I was thinking maybe a big tray of activated charcoal in the HVAC intake and another in the CR box. In my experience, the tiny charcoal filters in most air cleaners get saturated in about 48 hours. What works for y’all? Super extra bonus points for ongoing maintenance and cost-reduction tips and tricks.
Thank you fellow Lemmings for anything ya got.
I made a diy filter that I like quite a bit. Foil tap a box fan onto some the high grade furnace air filters and bam big air filter that really pushes some air for cheap. Add the washable kind to the outside (attach at the plastic frame now the filter material) and you can keep those fine filters lasting a long time
Incense? Scented candles? Essential oil diffuser?
No one mentioned checking all the seals around the property?
Since the smell is coming from outside, check that all your windows, doors, or any other openings are well sealed. As much as possible keep the bad smelling outside air from seeping in. You don’t mention the age of the property, but if it’s over 20 years old it’s probably leaky af.
You do need some air exchange (clear CO2 & let in oxygen), but if you get it well enough sealed you can then look into an air exchange that you can filter (also reclaim heat / cool).
After that all the air filter & deodorizer suggestions from others will help. But my first thought is minimizing the smell from getting in as best you can.
Yeah an ozone generator is like fumigation, you should not be around when using it.
You’re probably going to end up getting used to the smell. It’s likely that if you ask your neighbors, this is what they’ll tell you.
Your only other option is an industrial scale carbon filter, those will be expensive. They sell them for ahem grow operations if you’re wondering where to start looking.
I’ll say it again for emphasis you don’t want to be in the same room or building as an ozone generator. It has been linked to lung cancer
Whole family got poisoned by an ozone generator in Japan. They’re everywhere for some reason over there. Horrible things. I check every hotel room now for hidden ozone.
Details? Never heard of this being so ubiquitous, apart from de-stinking smoking hotel rooms?
The incident itself was: when we entered the room it smelled kind of strange, it’s hard to describe. I dismissed it as “weird hotel room smell.”
After 15 minutes, my asthma started to really get bad, even when using my puffer. Like, unable to breathe bad. We all developed a severe headache and dizziness. After another 15 minutes of searching, I found this small device in the room that was running on full blast.
Translating it with my phone, it described itself as an “anti-virus cleansing tool” or something. I aired out the room immediately, but ultimately we didn’t feel comfortable staying there anymore and left. Quick phone research showed you should give 2 hours minimum before letting guests into the room, let alone have it running 24/7.
They refused to give us a refund. My general experience in Japan was that people will try to “smooth over” any problems, but IMO actually poisoning your guests isn’t smoothable. I got the feeling this is just kind of the way this hotel operated; which is strange because it had generally good reviews.
I called my doctor later, but he said I probably should be fine; it’s comparable to having chain smoked 20 cigarettes. More of a continuous long term risk than an acute risk. Not ideal for the younger family members obviously, but you also can’t change the past.
After that incident, I was paranoid and on the lookout everywhere for these machines. I noticed that most elevators had “anti virus” ozone blasted in them. Stores and shops did too. I got pretty good at detecting the smell, and would look around for a sign on the wall advertising the “anti virus” features, usually in Japanese. I tried to hold my breathe or cover my mouth to prevent symptoms.
Every hotel room and airbnb had one of these machines; sometimes gigantic cabinet sized ones. Though apart from the incident, they were all switched off and hidden in a closet, so I was mostly ok with it.
I think it’s to try and combat COVID-19 or something? But they just never took them down. From my research, they’re actually completely useless for this purpose, but it probably feels better than doing nothing.
These devices produce ionized air which is indeed claimed to deactivate viruses. Unless the device is defective ozone might only be produced as a byproduct in small quantities, due to the toxicity, you’ve mentioned.
Ionized air immediately turns into ozone. Those oxygen ions do not like being ions and will do something about it
That might be right in general, but the device that the commenter included a picture of says オゾン (ozone) all over it. You can also see the O3 molecules in the diagram. So producing ozone does appear to be the primary function of that particular machine.
https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/will-ozone-generator-protect-me-and-my-family-covid-19
do not use ozone generators in occupied spaces. When used at concentrations that do not exceed public health standards, ozone applied to indoor air does not effectively remove viruses, bacteria, mold, or other biological pollutants
Basically, the stuff they use in shops and elevators is useless because it’s too low concentration to matter. The low grade “gentle” ozone machines are just marketing scams. You’re just mildly polluting the air, which if anything will make COVID worse, by mildly increasing the public’s risk of respiratory disease. Ozone is a major pollutant; humans are not meant to breathe ozone at all if possible.
You have to really saturate the space with a powerful ozone generator to have any effect. But then you have to be extremely careful to give the free radicals enough time to dissipate before any humans go in there, or again you’re just poisoning people.
Honestly, it’s insane to me that it’s even legal to routinely fill an indoor habitable room with an invisible caustic gas that has low odour. With no mandated safety precautions like a sign on the door or a lock to prevent accidental exposure. Just y’know, filling my room with gas again, no biggie.
I have a paper mill in my town but I’ve never gotten used to it. That being said, I’m not nearby and only smell it when driving by.
Some commenter said it smells like fart. That smelling ingredient would be butyric acid then. It can be “caught” and neutralized in a generated nebula from water with sodium carbonate.
Needs some tinkering to build this as the air intake for a whole house, but cheaper than the charcoal in the long run.
Another option is a photocatalytic filter from titanium dioxide and ultra violet light. Costly, but only once.
“Some commenter” being Edward Norton?
Butyric acid smells like vomit, not farts. Fart-type smells are usually sulphur-containing compounds like hydrogen sulphide.
I note that this page gives sodium sulphide as one of the chemicals used in paper making, which readily turns into hydrogen sulphide in wet, acidic environments, so that would be my best guess.
I suppose that means it’s possible that if there’s butyric acid vapour coming in from elsewhere(?), then sure, that could be the trigger, but you’d smell vomit first.
Either way, a cheap thing to try would be a homemade baking soda deodoriser. That would neutralise acids as well as hydrogen sulphide (by turning it back into the sodium sulphide).
The main caveat is that if any of the other smelly compounds are alkaline nitrogen compounds (skatole, long chain diamines), baking soda won’t help with those.
Another cause, the same cure. Nice :)
Stop him from doing all those drugs and talking to patients that aren’t his. Make him go home, get some sleep, wash his clothes.
House MD I think. Tv show I didn’t watch
Silly joke :)
I drilled 110mm holes in my walls, 3d printed and outside grille, a pipe to cover the wall thickness, and on the inside I added a 120mm computer case fan and picked up a cheap power supply locally. Does wonders for the air quality.
And yes, paper mills smell like the kind of farts you have in between bursts of diarrhea
How does any of that help air quality? All you’ve done is make a hole to the outside.
It’s a window with extra steps and less usability
I’m glad I’m not the only one who is confused
Kinda funny that computer cases sometimes need 6 or more of these to keep a whole cubic foot of space cool but this person is using a single one to air their whole house out.
It won’t solve the problem, but after a nearby skunk spraying, I found placing one dryer sheet in each of my hvac intakes (with the filter) freshens everything up for a few days.
They make charcoal-infused filters.
I bought a box of four and attached them to the outside of my CR filter. That dramatically lowered the stink in my house that comes from the previous owner having dogs and not taking care of them.
I’ve already pulled the old carpet, scrubbed the entire floor, painted over the worst sections with odor blocking stuff, put in vapor barrier and a new hardwood floor, and run an ozone generator in my entire house while I was at work and there is still just like that faint whiff of dog odor in the house that I can’t quite get rid of.
But the charcoal filters on the CR box fan does the trick.
there’s probably dog piss in some of the walls too
It’s not a pee smell, it’s a musty dander smell.
My hunch is that it’s in the vents, but I got a quote to clean my vents and they wanted like sixteen hundred dollars, so i’m going to be dealing with it for a while.
If the house smelled like piss, I never would have bought it.
I’m certain you have, but it’s worth asking- have you replaced the hvac filters with hepa models? You can also build a cheap air purifier with a box fan and a hepa filter just to run while you’re away and catch anything airborne
Yeah, they’re Merv 13 for the CR filter and merv 17 for the whole house.
Activated carbon and a lot of it is all that really works for smells that don’t come in pm2.5 size or larger.
I have a Corsi-Rosenthal box, but that does nothing for smells.
It does something by reducing the amount of stuff in the air before it settles, so I would keep using it regularly anytime there are poor air conditions. It certainly won’t solve the problem on its own. The molecules do get trapped in the filters though, so it might need to have those changed if the box itself starts to get an odor when not running.
The smells from stuff that has settled on surfaces or embedded itself in furniture or other porous surfaces will need to be removed and approaches that work well for pet smells should work for industrial smells. Wiping down surfaces, vacuuming and mopping, steam cleaning furniture and carpets, and other things will help improve things. Odor neutralizes like febreeze can help a lot too.
