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Some years back I signed a lease in a luxury apartment hi-rise in downtown Chicago. The complex had been an add-on to an existing shopping center and mall. Long

by Aboh33 6y ago

Some years back I signed a lease in a luxury apartment hi-rise in downtown Chicago. The complex had been an add-on to an existing shopping center and mall. Long story short, the apartment smelled like old grease and trash often, and I could never trace the exact source as it would come and go. No matter how many air filtration units I installed, or odor absorbing devices, the odors would still collect and infiltrate my clothing and furniture. Again, it wasn't constant but regular enough for me not to stay there very often. I ended up caulking the entire apartment with clear caulk and sealing any air gaps. Because the hi-rise was pressurized like most hi-rises, I concluded somehow this was drawing up smells from grease traps etc. Of course I could never prove it. My conclusion is that most of these buildings are so cheaply and poorly made that I will never again rent a unit like this. Too bad I spent 30k on the lease and hardly ever stayed there. So the woman's experience seems pretty plausible to me.

crocsarecool 6y ago
I’m surprised she didn’t try to escape from her apartment like you did. She mentions sleeping outside on an occasion, but that’s about it. I think I would have paid some money to go to a hotel, stay with a friend, grab an AirBnB someplace just to figure out if my symptoms went away. The things she was experiencing sounded just horrible.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  The difficulty there is if you believe your home is making you sick, you’re quite likely to feel more at ease and sleep better in another place. Or you’re sleeping away from all your new furnishings and the building materials which are off-gassing. So, you get a datapoint that’s better, but what do you do with it?
kevin_nisbet 6y ago
> I ended up caulking the entire apartment with clear caulk and sealing any air gaps. Because the hi-rise was pressurized like most hi-rises, I concluded somehow this was drawing up smells from grease traps etc. I would be cautious of taking actions like these as it can have some pretty bad knock on effects. I'm on the board of my condo corporation for a high rise in Canada and we have seen topics like this come up from time to time. To help control odour between units, the air handling system in our building is designed to draw air into the hallways, from the hallways to the units, to outside. The idea of routing airflow like this is to try and prevent smell transfer between units, but the airflow also has a purpose to help control moisture buildup, which IIRC gets worse if there is no airflow, and can lead to mold. So we discourage blocking the airflow from the way the building was designed, and property management has advised us in other buildings this had been observed to lead to severe moisture problems. And we have had issue pop up with trash smell and the like. Where that's happened to us is two causes, there is a sort of air damper on the garbage chute, and it's gotten jammed on us IIRC. The other is our garbage room opens to take the bins out, and if the doors are left open for an extended period and the wind hits the building right it can draw air through the garbage room and through the chute. This can also occur when folks leave their trash blocking the chute door open allowing more air to flow between the chute and hallways. Stuff like that can be hard to figure out, because if the garbage room is left open every day, it doesn't always happen due to the wind or possibly other factors. The third one we get sometimes is smoking smells, which is usually caused by a smoker not wanting to use their balcony in winter, so instead they go into the stairwells. We traced one of those across more than 20 floors once. It can be difficult to trace those ones, so it comes with a lot of sending broadcast messages and work to trace down. I get not all property managers are super helpful, but if they get a few reports from different individuals and can link it to some action like having the garbage room open can hopefully have them solve the real problem.
- Aboh33 6y ago
  Just to follow up, I removed all the caulking when I terminated my lease and left the apartment in its original state, ready for its next victim...
wrongdonf 6y ago
Any appliance that uses water needs to drain the water. A house has water pipes and it has drain pipes. The drain pipes connect directly to the sewer main. They are full of sewer gas. What everyone knows is that these drain pipes have “traps” that use a slug of water to prevent sewer gases from intruding into the house. What everyone does not know is that these drain lines need to be vented in order to operate properly. Usually these vent lines terminate outside. But you can use vent lines that terminate inside the house, with a special check valve to allow air to go into the vent but not the other way around. They are notorious for failing and leaking sewer gas into the house. If I had to guess, this is what your problem was. Did your kitchen have an island with a sink?

by Aboh33 6y ago

crocsarecool 6y ago

I’m surprised she didn’t try to escape from her apartment like you did. She mentions sleeping outside on an occasion, but that’s about it. I think I would have paid some money to go to a hotel, stay with a friend, grab an AirBnB someplace just to figure out if my symptoms went away. The things she was experiencing sounded just horrible.

sokoloff 6y ago
The difficulty there is if you believe your home is making you sick, you’re quite likely to feel more at ease and sleep better in another place. Or you’re sleeping away from all your new furnishings and the building materials which are off-gassing. So, you get a datapoint that’s better, but what do you do with it?

kevin_nisbet 6y ago

> I ended up caulking the entire apartment with clear caulk and sealing any air gaps. Because the hi-rise was pressurized like most hi-rises, I concluded somehow this was drawing up smells from grease traps etc. I would be cautious of taking actions like these as it can have some pretty bad knock on effects. I'm on the board of my condo corporation for a high rise in Canada and we have seen topics like this come up from time to time. To help control odour between units, the air handling system in our building is designed to draw air into the hallways, from the hallways to the units, to outside. The idea of routing airflow like this is to try and prevent smell transfer between units, but the airflow also has a purpose to help control moisture buildup, which IIRC gets worse if there is no airflow, and can lead to mold. So we discourage blocking the airflow from the way the building was designed, and property management has advised us in other buildings this had been observed to lead to severe moisture problems. And we have had issue pop up with trash smell and the like. Where that's happened to us is two causes, there is a sort of air damper on the garbage chute, and it's gotten jammed on us IIRC. The other is our garbage room opens to take the bins out, and if the doors are left open for an extended period and the wind hits the building right it can draw air through the garbage room and through the chute. This can also occur when folks leave their trash blocking the chute door open allowing more air to flow between the chute and hallways. Stuff like that can be hard to figure out, because if the garbage room is left open every day, it doesn't always happen due to the wind or possibly other factors. The third one we get sometimes is smoking smells, which is usually caused by a smoker not wanting to use their balcony in winter, so instead they go into the stairwells. We traced one of those across more than 20 floors once. It can be difficult to trace those ones, so it comes with a lot of sending broadcast messages and work to trace down. I get not all property managers are super helpful, but if they get a few reports from different individuals and can link it to some action like having the garbage room open can hopefully have them solve the real problem.

Aboh33 6y ago
Just to follow up, I removed all the caulking when I terminated my lease and left the apartment in its original state, ready for its next victim...

wrongdonf 6y ago

Any appliance that uses water needs to drain the water. A house has water pipes and it has drain pipes. The drain pipes connect directly to the sewer main. They are full of sewer gas. What everyone knows is that these drain pipes have “traps” that use a slug of water to prevent sewer gases from intruding into the house. What everyone does not know is that these drain lines need to be vented in order to operate properly. Usually these vent lines terminate outside. But you can use vent lines that terminate inside the house, with a special check valve to allow air to go into the vent but not the other way around. They are notorious for failing and leaking sewer gas into the house. If I had to guess, this is what your problem was. Did your kitchen have an island with a sink?