Smoke leaking in from next door

ericpode

We have just had new neighbours and they seem to smoke quite heavily because a strong smell of cigarettes is getting through into our upstairs bedrooms.

The house is semi-detached, and the bedroom floor has joists running parallel to the front of the house, and (from memory) they run through the adjoining wall for the full width of both addresses.

We haven't had the floor boards up yet (we have lots of stuff to move before we can do that), but I suspect that the cigarette smoke may be getting through gaps between the joists and the surrounding brickwork.

If correct, my first thought is to spray expanding foam into any such gaps, and maybe over the face of the brickwork in an attempt to make it air tight. But if this doesn't work it could be difficult removing the foam in order to try something else.

I guess there may be a chance that the smoke may be getting thorough tiny holes between the bricks. There are small unused fireplaces in the upstairs rooms which are back-to-back with those next door, so there may even be a remote chance of some leakage between the two chimneys.

Can anyone suggest a better approach than using expanding foam?