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.
Exposing yourself will likely lead to asthma, bronchitis, and eventually lung disease leading to death. Are you really stuck? If you can leave do, it is not worth your health.
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
That’s basically a Corsi-Rosenthal box, but smaller. I’ve been playing around with a bowl of activated charcoal in the box, which helps a bit. I also have a bag of zeolite coming, which I’ve read is even more effective and has the added bonus of being renewable just by placing it out in bright sunlight.
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
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.
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 :)
“Some commenter” being Edward Norton?
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.
Well yea, but at the same time keeping a 300+ W PC cool is not the same as just…moving the air
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.
The seals are all super solid. This is pretty recent construction and a custom build (not a spec house). When running exhaust fans, there is enough negative pressure to pull in a little bit of stinky outside air, and enough resistance to reduce the effectiveness to exhausting cooking and bathroom air (humidity is my foremost concern there).
Lots of great suggestions in the thread that launched me down a few different rabbit holes. Ideally, I’d like to exchange some fresh air at will, but right now that is limited to when the wind is blowing the right way. It’s starting to look something like a heat exchanger outside air intake with a zeolite cartridge and/or photocatalytic mitigation.
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.
Activated carbon and a lot of it is all that really works for smells that don’t come in pm2.5 size or larger.
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.
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 :)
Incense? Scented candles? Essential oil diffuser?
That’s just a cover-up, and I would prefer to avoid additional PM2.5 in the inside air. We’re already prone to forest fire smoke here.
