Stopping cooking smell and air being pumped into my house from my neighbour kitchen

fluffymuffy

I would be wary of any dispute over this - as you'll have to declare it should you come to sell your house. And if it isn't resolved you'll have to declare that too. Your best approach is to work to seal your house off from next door.

duncan303

I have come across this before:

Can you clarify if the kitchen extractor is vented into the existing chimney on your neighbours side? Or is it vented to the roof with new ducting?

Is your chimney closed off with a vent plate? Do you use your chimney?



If they have run new ducting to the roof there may be a loose connectoin especially in a ceiling space between joists, sometimes the joists extend far into the party wall and are not closed off . It is common for these air spaces between terraces to have a gap joining the air spaces in each house.


If they have run extractor straight into the chimney opening, a number of problems can exist. If you neighbours use the extractor on low setting (or even off) moisture laden hot air with the stink passes into the chimney space and can condense at some height depending on atomospheric condtions. this point is referred to as dew point. and if it occurs in the chimney because this stinky air is heavier than fresh air it will fall back down.If there is any gap between your flues this will pass into your flue and down into your chimney opening. There could be a gap anywhere up the chimney but most especially at the top of the stack where the bricks stop and the pots are bedded, there is almost always a large void. Imagine dry ice as the stinky air as it comes to the top of the bricks it will just overflow down all the other flues. Furthermore to complicate things further the foul air could be being extracted succesfully and be just falling back down the outside of the building and in through your downstairs window.

So you could check if the chimney is lined all the way and passes out the top of the pot. I would ask your friendly RISC person that you suspect that the chimney is not lined sufficiently and your brickwork may be being contaminated with cooking greases which are bleeding through into and damaging your property.

A smoke test will help but it has to be done when the conditions are correct, frying , boiling potatoes, otherwise it is a dry smoke and is a test for fires not for cooking odour contamination.

You could ask your neighbour to put the fan on full and cook something stinky and see if that is enough to force the smells out.

just some thoughts...................

oh yes i forgot to say one occurence of this was concerning the regular cooking of cuttlefish and boiling of whole lambs heads:eek:


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