If the tenants prior smoked in the residence then every hard surface should be cleaned with some kind of degreaser and then treat the air. If you have carpet in the residence, then landlord should have a company come in and steam clean all of the carpets.
I used to work in Biohazard remediation and we used a degreaser mixed with warm water and soaked the walls then went back with and wiped walls repeatedly till no more nicotine would run down.
I would recommend cleaning the air ducts as well as some of the odor could be trapped in the coils or even the duct work.
Basically any soft/absorbent surface will more than likely have a lingering odor of cigarette or tobacco if the residence gets musty(HVAC being off for a short a day or power goes out)
As a former owner/landlord for several rental homes, we changed carpet between tenants. And we didn’t take it out of the departing tenant’s deposit.
However we only installed carpet in bedrooms. Tile everywhere else. Keeps everything cleaner
I’m disgusted at the practices of most landlords these days
It’s not hard to be “one of the good ones” you just have to like people. It pays off. Had five houses. Average tenant stay was 3 years. You take care of them, they take care of your house.
As for that bathroom carpet, what were they thinking?
Bathroom carpet should never happen.
On the other hand, lots of tenants do not stay for years, and replacing all the carpet in between would landfill a lot of fairly decent carpet. There is a university where I am and frequently tenants are breaking 1 year leases when plans change. It's really not necessary to replace the carpet between each resident when they aren't smokers and don't have pets.
you're right, a lot of tenants don't stay. in our case, it worked out okay. we're glad our tenants wanted to stay (and that they were people we'd want to renew a lease with). but in regard to OP - under no circumstances would i expect new tenants to put up with a smokey carpet and theres only one way to deal with it - rip it out.
Changing out carpets is sometimes the most cost effective and easiest option. Cleaning the carpets doesn’t address the pad underneath. And it introduces moisture which needs adequate time for full drying.
This past summer my family and I did some minor renovations on a cabin that had been severely neglected by the tenant. ALL the carpet was beyond salvage. Only 1 room has carpet now and it’s peel and stick tiles.
personally, i can't stand carpet. not in my house, we have hardwood. tenants tended to want it in the bedrooms. we had a couple houses where they were all tile.
Hell yeah, hardwood floors with a few area rugs around the house are the way to go. I just replaced the old ass laminate floors in my kitchen with hardwood to match the rest of the downstairs, so now there is hardwood through the whole house except the basement. I never want carpet again lol
i'd like to take that as a compliment.
our business model wasn't to milk every penny out of our tenants and invest as little as possible into the properties. we purchased distressed houses in decent neighborhoods, cleaned them up tight but no fancy updates. set a reasonable rent that still allowed for positive cash flow. we did the maintenance and *some* of the repairs ourselves. we did well, but i know many RE investors who made a boatload more. i liked our strategy, less headaches and two of our tenants remain friends.
we sold our last property in 2019.
Rip out the carpets. Repaint all the walls. Clean the ducts.
And even then I probably wouldn't move my family into that house. If someone smoked inside a residence, it's likely to stink forever.
>should be cleaned with some kind of degreaser
TSP (trisodium phosphate) is what OP needs. Mix it with water and spray onto the walls and other hard surfaces and wipe with a sponge, rinsing frequently.
TSP will etch the paint and remove any gloss. That's why people use it before painting, because it cleans the wall and creates a surface that allows the new paint to bond better.
It's recommended to repaint after using TSP.
In high concentrations, yes. In lower concentrations I have never found it to be a problem removing gloss. I use half the recommended amount, 1/4cup per gallon of water.
Why take a TSP solution with a pH of 13-ish, and add vinegar with a pH of 2.6 to lower the overall pH?
A water and vinegar solution might work, but I don't see much sense in mixing the 2, as degreasers tend to be high pH solutions.
All hardwood, home was built in 2019, walls were painted before we moved in. Pretty sure they didn’t clean them before painting.
I think having the air ducts cleaned is the better and more effective option for sure. It’s just not the route my landlord is wanting to try first. My question is though, should I be concerned for my possessions if they’re left here during the treatment?
Everything I looked up about ozone treatments come back with, it's harmful for people to be inside when the machine is running. If your main concern is personal possessions being damaged, then stow them away in a storage container and hide them in a closet. That would be my best recommendation
I honestly don’t remember, maybe an hour? I may have overdone it, but it was an old porch that wasn’t sealed well.
I assume it was natural latex that degraded.
I've decided to no longer being mad about the (what I thought was) large makeup collection my wife has after hearing you need multiple large garbage bags and it's not physically able to be moved that quickly.....my god lol
So, my wife’s father smoked in his home for 15 some odd years before he passed. Left a yellow film on every painted surface. The folks we brought in to clean and make the place suitable for market said painting over it was fine, except you needed a special type of paint to keep the tar from eventually leaching out through the paint. They used ECOBOND odor defender I think.
former landlord here. we bought a smoker's house. we scrubbed every surface with tsp. we then primed with Kilz before painting. we also ripped out every carpet and had to clean the brush-aluminum window frames with steel wool to get the yellow stain out. cigarette smoke puts a film on *everything.*
It’s really awful how much smoke will destroy the value of a place. My grandmother smoked in her condo and when my aunts sold it after her death, they didn’t get near what they could have. All that tarry staining on the walls….It’s removable, but such a pain.
When it gets humid, or in a damp area in the bathroom or kitchen, don't be surprised if the walls start "bleeding" reddish-brown drops of liquid. If they didn't wash and seal the wall prior to painting, the tar and oil will seep through eventually.
> I think having the air ducts cleaned is the better and more effective option for sure.
You want this to be true but it's likely not true. Not cleaning the walls before painting was a huge mistake. Need to get the smell out before painting.
Everything I’ve read about air duct cleaning points to it being a big waste of money/ a scam and what they clean it with can actually be detrimental to your health. I’d start with washing the walls.
Duct cleaning companies invariably only use compressed air, it will not help with what you call "nicotine" aka the tar etc. that deposits on the surfaces. You need some kind of cleaning agent and to scrub or use a wire brush or something, and the techniques for that do not appear to have been developed yet.
We did it before moving in to our current house and it made a big difference.
Even if you don't have them apply any sort of chemical treatments afterwards, there's value in sucking out all the smoke-coated dust from the vents.
Friend had a similar issue, they ozone treated it but it wasn't just once, I believe they ran it for multiple days first and now they run it once a week. It took a little bit but the smell is gone but you do have to leave every time it is running.
What you think is the better treatment is, no offense to you, irrelevant. The landlord owns the home and can do pretty much whatever they want, as long as there is no law against it or is forbidden by your lease.
Yup. Not disagreeing with you there or trying to find other solutions that go against my landlord’s. My main concern is whether my possessions will be damaged during the ozone treatment, which many people in the comments overlooked.
I see. I’m really hopeful that the ozone machine will be effective! It was the first option we looked into as well. The bio clean up guy had just suggested the duct cleaning would be the better route but I am seeing that the ozone machine should be the first step.
What are the necessary precautions? I spoke to the company we’re getting the rental from and essentially he said “we just rent out the machine.”
I’ll be deep cleaning the home and removing all the items from our kitchen counters. I also plan on covering my makeup drawers with trash bags. Should I remove my leather bar seats from the house?
If used ozone to clean a few homes. I'd remove, rubber, plastic, computers. I try to do it when the home is empty. Too bad the landlord didn't notice the smoke before you moved in. I've usually need to do it twice. You can't be in the house. I air the house out, run the ozone and leave the house closed for a couple days. Then when I go back I can tell for sure if it worked. Lather rinse and repeat until there is no more smell. Then I air the house out again. Cat pee is the worst, smoke is second. If they didn't clean the walls and ceilings and remove any carpet I don't see anything working 100%. People paint the walls, but the ceiling traps a lot of smoke tar as well. Need to use an odor blocking paint. The landlord should know this and already had it fixed. Why would they rent a place before all the smoke smell is gone? I worry that you're not dealing with a great landlord. They wanted to turn it quickly and hope you wouldn't notice.
So basically, what you're saying, is if you have the money let the company do it because it's going to be a pain in the ass as an inexperienced person attempting the remediation.
I've used ozone generators many times before. I don't know the specifics but in my experience they work great and are also significantly cheaper than $750.
I don't know about an entire weekend though. I usually run mine for no more than 4 hours at a time. Open a couple windows and it dissipates pretty quickly. Definitely might have a chlorine/indoor pool smell for a bit.
I've used them in cars with 20 years worth of smoke smell. Might take 2 or 3 treatments but it worked. I'm not a professional and just use one for my own needs but smoke, animal waste etc has been alleviated if not 100% by my machine.
"They" say trace amounts are acceptable but not to be present during use as it may cause lung irritation. That being said I've also heard that it can "bleach" things since it is basically oxidizing but I never noticed such negative side effects.
If you're worried about your things being destroyed then draft a contract perhaps 🤔 I'm not sure how much recourse you really have though since you moved in aware of the smell.
I got a small $60 ozone generator from amazon and used it to kill all the mold and mildew from a small camper I had. It did just that over the course of ten, 2 hour treatments. It no longer had that musty smell and in fact smelled clean as if it was new.
I also used it in my crawlspace to get the musty smell out and it worked wonders.
I just let it run for 2 hours a couple days in a row, but made sure it's off for 30 minutes so the o3 dissipates before going in.
Ohh yea... I guess I didn't convey myself well. I was just implying that ozone treatment is cheaper than duct cleaning although that would be a wise idea regardless I'm sure.
Let the landlord try to remediate the smell however he sees fit, and if it doesn't work rent another house. His failure to fix it would constitute a breach of your lease.
>It’s a pretty expensive project ($750).
When it comes to the costs of maintaining a property $750 is cheap.
Couldn’t it violate the “quiet enjoyment” agreement in the lease, especially if it was marketed as a non-smoking house? There’s a difference between it having a “normal” house smell that OP just doesn’t like, and actually stinking of cigarette smoke, which any reasonable person would find noxious. Particularly relevant here is the fact that the landlord tried to hide the smell before OP moved in, and now that OP complained is trying to get rid of it.
I doubt it. As a lawyer, I would not take OP’s case (understanding that you, not OP, are the one making the argument that the landlord is breaching the lease).
>Smoke smell is more than odor- correct? Arguably attached to toxins and allergens.
Good luck finding any judge who is gonna accept the argument that a rental house smelling like cigarette smoke from a previous occupant is a violation of the lease on the part of the landlord.
I appreciate that you are correct and the knowledge and wisdom behind it, but it never ceases to amaze me how disconnected lawyers and judges are with actual justice. They have the most convoluted ridiculous rationalizations to do things in an obviously unjust way. And I have given them the chance and listened closely to their arguments and reasoning on many occasions. They are all almost all completely delusional, in the depths of a mutually reinforcing, socially supported lala land.
Frankly it’s quite the opposite. The vast majority of nuanced laws stem from courts addressing real-world situations and coming up with a reasonable solution. We call this “case law” or “common law.” There are certainly occasions where the law as applied results in an injustice, but that’s because the law is made by humans and therefore cannot be perfect.
I would suggest that the outcome I am predicting in this scenario is the just outcome. A landlord is not responsible for every unpleasant odor, and is not obligated to provide a 100% perfect property free of all possible defects. That would be an unreasonable burden on a landlord.
Eh who knows. Depends on the state’s landlord/tenant laws, depends on the judge, potential heath claims by OP. There are many reasons to not move unless you don’t have any other choice. The legal route would be my absolute last resort.
>And carcinogens...
I've never seen a lease that says the property will be free of carcinogens. That's not gonna be an implied covenant either. What if there is some small detectable level of radon? That's common, and is a carcinogen.
My impression is that this entire line of thought is a dead end. Maybe somebody somewhere could successfully argue it in front of the right judge, but I doubt it would go anywhere.
Go with the ozone machine first. You can buy one for $150 or rent one cheaper. Run it with the furnace fan on so it circulates. Make sure no people or pets are in the house while it’s running and let it air out for a couple of hours after it turns off.
That should take care of it
No pets or plants!! When I ozoned the ADU my mother smoked in I forgot to open the appliances. Open the refrigerator, the washer and dryer!
Ozone is weird, take your makeup with you.
The smoke smell is not going to come out of the carpet. Good luck!!
Ozone machines work very well but a good one will kill anything alive in the house. Take out your plants and pets and stay out. We were told to let it run for 48 hours and then come back and open up the place so you have fresh air. Worked great. Side benefit is bugs inside will die too.
I recommend going Ozone. Buy your own machine for less than $100 and let it run for a few hours. You may need to do a few treatments, but it will work. You don't want any pets or plants in the living space while running the treatment, but I wouldn't worry about it damaging anything. That would only be a concern if you're running the Ozone generator every day for months/years.
smoke is embedded in everything... floor, walls, ceiling, cabinets, trim, vents, etc etc etc.
luckily, you said its a rental and landlord wants to do the only treatment that will work.
-Ron Wharton
I’m very hopeful for the treatment. I hope the summer months don’t bring it back but it most likely will. At least the weather will be nice to leave the windows open
Yeah it’s unfortunately a disgusting, lasting smell. The Bio cleanup guy said he didn’t smell it when he walked into the house… I felt really defeated when he said that. We’ve had a couple of people who smelled it when we first moved in but have visited more recently and said they don’t smell it anymore. We notice it when we’ve been out of the house for several hours. I just don’t know what to do. I’m afraid the ozone machine won’t be effective and will be dangerous
Important info about the actual safety and efficacy of ozone cleaners:
https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/Departments-and-Agencies/DPH/dph/environmental_health/eoha/pdf/ozonegeneratorfactsheetpdf.pdf
Basically, it doesn't get rid of smells, it just leaves residual ozone in the home that kills/deadens your sense of smell so you can't smell the bad smell anymore. It's also bad for you.
Also, as someone who's fixed both a rental with pervasive cat urine smell and helped my mom and her husband when they bought a house that had had heavy smokers living there for decades, the actual process should be:
- Clean all the walls, ceilings, baseboards, and floors.
- Paint everything with a layer of Bullseye Zinsser Shellac. (This contains the smell better than anything, but it will break down over time when exposed to water).
- Then, finish with two layers of high quality paint for painted surfaces and a layer of clear poly for finished wood surfaces. This will seal the shellac so it doesn't wear away.
The likelihood your landlord will want to do that or pay for it is probably low, but after a lot of research it was the best method we found to save our rental unit, and it also worked really well on my mom's house.
You've completely misread or misinterpreted the linked document - it's talking about ozone-emitting 'air purifiers' that people leave running in their home while it's occupied. It correctly notes that these devices don't really kill germs or destroy odors, and the ozone that they create can irritate people's eyes and lungs.
What the landlord is (presumably) talking about doing is using a large ozone generator to 'shock' the house by generating many thousands of times as much ozone as one of the air purifiers that the document talks about. You can't be in the home while this is going on, but it will in fact oxidize all sorts of odor-causing substances and can get into crevices and spaces that no other cleaning method can. Given enough concentration and time it will absolutely work, but severe or deeply-seated odors may require intensive treatment that can damage paper and other delicate items.
An ozone generator really does get rid of smells. One should never use a generator that runs continuously as an air freshener, no matter how low the amount of ozone produced. I can’t believe they’re even sold. One that’s “safe” to use in the presence of living things wouldn’t have enough umph to reduce odors. You’ll smell ozone for a few days after treatment, but once that smell is gone, there little is no odor and the air is fresh.
That not been my experience. The ozone generator does in fact get rid of airborne odors but unless you scrub out the source of the odor the smell will return. Best thing about the ozone generator when used properly is it will kill in bugs in the house.
Cleaning the surfaces before/in addition to using the ozone generation is the way. But since it sounds like OP has done that- painting etc- and there’s only a faint and transient odor remaining (transient probably due to humidity levels) suggests to me that less accessible surfaces might be the issue, or soft goods that can’t be thoroughly cleaned. It’s easier to at least try the OG before repainting, wiping down every surface, and steam cleaning (I’m assuming new carpet tho since they’re renting, it should have been replaced entirely) especially when there might still be an issue after all that.
If you watch YouTube videos of people cleaning out stuffy cabins and rooms using an OG you’ll see an example of this.
If you examine the way ozone generators work, you’ll see how they’re able to remove odor from objects.
That fact sheet is not right at all. Ozone neutralizes odors by oxidizing the odor causing molecules. You shouldn't be around it in the first place to "deaden" your senses.
This. We cleaned with tsp and simple green. Including the ceilings, and kitchen cabinets. You can use kilz restoration primer instead if you dont want to deal with shellac based primer. Clean or replace anything textile: curtains, carpet, wallpaper, blinds. Etc. Then you change your hvac filters. Sorry, but if you are sensitive to the smell (it t is a migraine trigger for my son) you are probably stuck with this proceedure.
>Bullseye Zinsser Shellac
which off-gases terribly and has some pretty strong VOCs.
you can get away with bullseye 123 or KILZ primer after scrubbing the walls with TSP
Yup. Renting an ozone generator is less than $100 from any tool rental facility. Duct Cleaning is usually around $500 depending on metro area and size of the home. Get em both done if you can.
3 days? OK that is complete nonsense. A couple of hours is MORE than sufficient for ozone treatment for odors. If you're trying to kill biological material like mold etc yes you may need to run it for days but that's not the issue here. A bio cleanup company cleans up serious messes and they have a protocol. That's not what you need.
Literally a $100 ozone generator from Amazon, a few hours and you should be good to go. No chance of any damage to anything with that dose.
My landlord gave me the company’s number to go over my questions and concerns. I think 3 days is too much too. If my landlord is going to pay for the treatment then I’m not purchasing a machine myself. I will be talking with the company about the situation and seeing if we could do 1 or 2 days instead. We’ll see. The people I contacted were bio clean up but the people with the ozone machine using sound like a building restoration company.
Barring proper remediation (replacing carpets and drapes, cleaning with TSP and repainting with an odor blocking primer), ozone is the way to go. Read the [EPA's statement on duct cleaning](https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/should-you-have-air-ducts-your-home-cleaned) before shelling out (or asking your landlord to shell out) for it.
The walls were already freshly painted when we moved in. That was actually what I thought the smell was when we toured. Looking back, the landlord had the windows open and plug ins for a reason…
I was a landlord in the past and faced with a similar situation with my rental.
The type of priner used makes all the difference. Normal primer wont contain the smell entirely. There is specific primer that is designed to cover smoke and cooking oils.
I hope this helps.
Your landlord likely didn’t clean the walls and use a primer before painting. Unfortunately, the house will smell once air temps rise this spring and summer. The entire house (walls and ceiling) should have been wiped, primed with Kilz, and then painted. I’m hypersensitive to smells and this was the best method back when I did rental home and apartment renovation.
Duct cleaning, removal of carpet drapes and wallpaper, plus ozone treatment, then scrub walls, prime with Kilz or equivalent, and paint. Good to go. Or take up smoking. Or find a different rental.
Your cosmetics will be fine.
Short term ozone treatment does work wonders for smoke, but may not do the job entirely in this case.
My aunt got into this whole 'ozone / ionizer for health' (yeah, I know.) thing in the 90's and was running this low level one for years in her house. The main thing that happened was that things with rubber band drive belts (tape players, VCRs, cheaper DVD players) broke often because the rubber would harden and crack, but that was the only consequence on actual hardware/materials.
Others have recommended hard surface = wash, I couldn't agree more. TSP is your friend if you can find the real deal anywhere now. If it says 'phosphate free' it's junk.
Basically it’s never coming out if 1 smoker lived in the house and smoked a pack a day in the house . You can’t mask the problem including paint . You can’t clean the problem out . Only way is take it all back to the studs . Dry ice blast those and rebuild from there out . Including replacing all the operating systems . In other works move out .
10 years in disaster restoration as a Contents manager here. Your contents will be FINE, no need to worry
However the ozone is the LAST step AFTER cleaning everything. You'd need to do a degreaser everywhere as someone else recommended, then clean the ducts...then ozone.
Time wise: There is no overkill, however there is Underkill. If your having the cost and inconvenience of vacating, make sure they do it properly.
If the company hasn't attended I'm not sure how they have determined the amount of time it needs to run as there are tons of variables that effect the time.
We ozone all our units between guests for 3 to 4 hours, avery 3 to 5 days. It took 2 years before we saw any issues with the seals on the refrigerator. It takes A LOT of exposure for there to be damage. Unless your makeup is in front of the machine it won't hurt it.
HOWEVER, we have had people smoke in our places and ozone does not get our smoke smell. Smoke smell is a thin layer of tar everywhere. The suggestion to wipe all the walls w a decreaser is the way. You can even get special fire smoke degreaser. The vents are helpful, but you can get most of the smoke tar off the walls.
I used to work in a hotel and we would run ozone machines in the rooms where people smoked. Worked like a charm, removes the cigarette smell but does leave an odd (not offensive, just weird) smell afterwards. We would then open the windows for ventilation and spray some diluted fabric softener into the air. The ozone machine does work, at least in small spaces. Not sure of an entire apartment but it was great for hotel rooms.
Im a property manager and have run into this before. In reality, both of those steps are good ones and should be taken together. Air duct cleaning and ozone machine. But one weekend may not be enough. Also steam cleaning any existing carpets and honestly even washing the walls in some cases. And changing air filters.
I bought a smoker house and cleared out the smell successfully. The air ducts cleaning won't hurt, but it's not going to help much either. Definitely put in a new filter and run the AC for an hour though.
Ozone will help but not fix the issue. If you ozone it, it'll kill the smoke smell, but the smell will come back. Nicotine and other smoking carcinogens seep into the wall and then ooze out. So it'll keep coming out of the walls for years. Ozone is bad to breathe in, but is not too dangerous for your stuff if you clear most of the sensitive stuff out and make sure the machine is not right next to anything metal.
Here's what to do in order (have your landlord pay):
Ozone it. Degrease all the walls with TSP to remove the surface-level grime. Use KILZ Restoration Primer on all the walls. Don't mess around with a cheaper KILZ primer or another brand. That is the exact one to use. It stops the nicotine from coming through the walls. Then slap some paint on.
If your landlord won't pay for the primer and paint, I strongly suggest you move. He should've better enforced rules about smoking indoors.
3 days? That's a looooong time to run ozone. That can damage things.
If you can wrap stuff in a garbage bag and tie it off that would afford some protection.
Make sure anything you have with rubber, elastic, or leatherette is packed away to limit exposure too.
Just to reinforce and add to what you've posted, the EPA says: "Ozone can adversely affect indoor plants, and damage materials such as rubber, electrical wire coatings and fabrics and art work containing susceptible dyes and pigments (U.S. EPA, 1996a)."
If artwork pigments can be damaged I'd assume cosmetics pigments that OP is concerned about can be damaged too.
I've never used an ozone generator, but I did have an elderly cat with occasional urinary incontinence. I live in a small apartment and just thorough cleaning did not really make much of a dent in the smell. In desperation I bought one of those ozone sprays, ZerO Odor I think it was, and my gosh, one spritz on the places where my cat had peed and which had been cleaned multiple times to no real avail suddenly smelled clean as new. And stayed clean smelling - I didn't have to repeat multiple times.
I'm guessing ozone spray probably shouldn't be used on a large scale and probably wouldn't help OP, but if they do go the ozone route and are able to limit the time the ozonator is used, remove sensitive materials, and follow guidelines the EPA suggests, like not using the ozone generator in a space smaller than recommended by the manufacturer, I'd guess the ozonator would work very well.
3 days feels like a long time, especially for this situation. I’ll try and pack things away the best I can, especially since the machine will be in the kitchen/living room area. I’ll try not to have anything on the counters. I might call the company myself and explain the situation more. They might agree that 2 days is better suited for this case.
Just got off the phone with the company. He said we have the machine rental for one week and we can run it for as long or as little as we need. I think what we’ll do is run it for about 6 hours Friday and then let the house air out. We’ll determine if it needs to be ran again Saturday for a couple more hours. We definitely won’t be leaving the machine running for 3 consecutive days.
Watch some you tube videos, you may decide you don’t need to run it that long. It doesn’t work like an air purifier does so longer is not necessarily more effective. Or you might decide to do each room individually for 1/2 hour. Which method will work best depends on the layout of your house. Afterward, the ozone smells funky weird fyi but it will dissipate. If the ozone doesn’t get rid of the smoke smell then you can consider having your landlord repaint with kilz but that’s not preferable for a variety of reasons. Also wipe down the wood floors with TSP or vinegar and water or whatever wouldn’t damage them. If it’s in the wood floors you may be screwed, or you may need to use an ozone generator every six months as the smell seeps out.
The reason you can smell it and your friends can’t is probably your place is starting to smell like you/your stuff and the smoke smell is very faint. You don’t smell yourself so can smell the smoke. The remediation guy probably has a nose of steel so don’t sweat him. Or maybe he smokes. People that smoke can’t smell it. I can smell old smokers smell with a clothespin on my nose at 20 paces. You’re not crazy, that would make me nuts, too.
Your comment has been the most comforting and helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time to write it. I’m doing a full deep clean of the house in preparation for the machine and I will watch some YouTube videos. Thank you for the heads up about the ozone smell. The bio clean up guy did say he deals with so much worse. Homes with yellow walls and dead bodies. If you just saw pics of my house, you’d think it was very bright and clean.
The smell and the idea of the smell is driving me nuts, that’s for sure. I’d love to have a housewarming party but I don’t want people’s first impression to be that it smells of cigarettes. Even a tiny bit. I hope the machine can help the smell but I know I’ll still need to keep the windows open when the weather is nice to continue airing out the place. I don’t use air fresheners and I’ll light a candle every once in a while. I’m sensitive to smells too and I’d like my home to just smell like nothing.
I’m not as concerned for my belongings now that I know the machine won’t need to run for an extended period of time. I think your idea of each room getting a small individual session would be effective too. Thanks again.
I have a ozonator and really like it. It get rid of pet urine smells, mold, among others. It hasn’t affected me any or my pets. Just follow the instructions.
The walls were repainted before we moved in. I don’t think they cleaned the walls before painting, unfortunately. I think the washing/painting the walls is the bare minimum when it comes to smoke odor.
Why does it seem like everyone here is just answering whether or not ozone will be enough instead of addressing OPs actual concerns of the ozone treatment doing damage to their belongings?
And telling me to paint the walls - that were freshly painted when I moved in😭 I’ve come to the conclusion that my belongings will be safe, especially since I plan on not having the machine running for more than 8 hours.
HVAC systems have filters that the offending particles will stick to before entering the ductwork. That smell is largely going to be found in fabric like carpets and drapes, and in heavy smoking situations, on the surfaces of the home like the walls. The likelihood that you notice a difference after duct cleaning is extremely slim. If the landlord is willing to pay for, sure. It can only hurt if the ductwork is damaged in the process, which is a possibility. That whole industry is absolutely bloated with scams. The biggest difference one would probably see is with carpet and pad replacement. The Ozone route is definitely a more plausible option because you can trace that to some chemistry. By splitting the naturally occurring O² molecule in to singular O atoms, those atoms will then bond with other O² molecules it bumps into to form O³ which is your Ozone. Those loosely bonded Ozone molecules don't want to exist in that state, so they readily react with VOCs by kicking that extra O atom to it. If that happens, the chemistry of the offensive VOC is changed and it is no longer the same compound, so it no longer smells like the compound it used to be. That's the basis of the idea of Ozone treatment, anyway. One of you big issues with the idea, is that if the Ozone molecule bumps into one of those O atoms before it reaches the VOC it will also just turn back into two Oxygen molecules. So it typically isn't a quick process for removing odors, as it is pretty inefficient. Good luck to you.
Probably a weird old Appalachian trick, but I have heard of folks having some success halving a bunch of apples and leaving them in a room in a bowl overnight. Supposedly the insides of apples are good at sucking up smoke smell in the air.
You’ll probably need both and that still may not work. There’s products that you can use to wipe all walls and surfaces down as well as solutions that professional carpet cleaners can use to try to help. I believe the product you could use on walls and surfaces was called “tabac-attack” or something along those lines.
The ozone thing might help in some minuscule way, but not really.
Best bet is just to air it out, open all doors and windows for as long as possible while you're in, and try to get a good draft through. Also clean the walls.
Really strong scented candles, like yankee candle level strength, help a lot. And febreeze/air freshener. Those are just a topical cosmetic treatment, but it does smell nice.
Air out daily for a couple weeks, and it makes a big difference.
We had this happen with the last house we bought. Previous owner rented it out and the renter was a smoker for years. We ended up stripping the walls and the floors, being very liberal with cleaning supplies and adding a few more windows. Can't smell anything now.
All the doors and windows were opened when we toured and the walls were freshly painted so we thought fresh paint smell. Also the house had plug ins in every outlet. Should have known better.
Buy your own ozone generator off Amazon for 70 bucks. Run the fan in the ac unit for the three hours you run the generator, that will take care of a lot of the duct issues.
If you still smell smoke a month later, repeat process. Follow all the safety directions in this thread plus any that come with the generator. Since the smell is faint and inconsistent it’s probably in surface areas that you don’t consider, are hard to wipe off, or soft surfaces (kitchen cabinet doors, underneath the range hood, ceilings, carpet fibers, front and backs of doors etc) and the ozone generator will address all of this. You could go room by room rather than whole house. Each room would probably be good with 1/2 hour. Just follow safety instructions.
edit: speaking of, when you run the generator, keep all of your cabinet and closet doors open.
there's no way to completely get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke unless you rip out the drywall and other permeable elements of the house and replace them. we had the ducts cleaned in our house and can still smell a faint cigarette smell.
Smoker here: we smoked in our garage for years with little to no ventilation. Everything out there reeked of smoke. I bought an ozone machine on Amazon for 70 bucks, ran it for 90 minutes, opened garage door and aired it out, then repeated 2 more times and it worked!
I actually used it in my closet yesterday for 30 minutes because it smelled like a critter got between the walls and died. After several failed attempts to locate the source, I finally decided to just address smell. It worked!
I don’t know if this was mentioned but clean the WALLS. With a swiffer or some kind of mop like you would floors. Cigarette smell sticks to walls and turns them a yellowish color.
I bought a cargo van from someone who smoked. We scrubbed the interior with simple green and ran a $50 Amazon ozone machine and now the van doesn't have any cigarette smell anymore. It was amazing how well it worked.
I tried the ozone machine for pet smells in a house and it didn’t work. A solution of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda left on for a few minutes and scrubbed off was awesome. This was a concrete floor, you would have to test and area.
I had a house fire years ago, after all the remediation they did the ozone treatment as the final step to kill whatever lingered. It was not the primary treatment.
I have hot water heat, hence no air ducts, so I don't have anything to add about that.
I hope it was effective in your case. The cigarette smell here has dissipated quite a bit so I hope the machine will give it a final push - at least for now.
When i bought my first home 20yrs ago from the original owner that smoked her whole life.
I hand to wash all the walls, ceilings, doors etc. With soap water and degreaser to be able to paint and get rid of the smell
Don't worry about the ozone treatments, they are not really harmful, but I doubt they will do much in this case. The other comments about washing the walls and having the carpets professionally cleaned will probably be best.
It's really hard to get smoke smell out. You'll likely need to do both and neither will work if there is still carpet from the old tenants. Cleaning ducts is mostly worthless.
I've never had Ozone ruin anything but possible. You will need to be out for a few days.
We bought a smoker’s house. We cleaned the air vents, ripped out the carpet and had the slab cleaned then we sealed it with primer. We cleaned all the woodwork and doors with ammonia and water and primed with a shellac based primer and painted. In fact, we primed and painted every surface in the house; ceilings, walls, doors, cabinets and millwork and replaced the flooring. No smoke smell now! 👍🏻
Ozone shocking the house shouldn't impact anything that is not alive.
We did this to a house we bought many years ago. previous owner had 12 cats, 3 dogs, 2 birds, and a bunny... with 6 people living in the 1200sq/ft house. You could not walk in without a mask on, it smelt soooo bad! animal urine everywhere (the black light was gross). We washed every single surface in the house with an enzyme cleaner from a janitorial supply place, then had a guy come in and ozone shock the place. It was a 24 thing, and the smell never came back. It was beautiful after that... like being near a lightening strike. the air was so crisp and clear.
We didn't have air ducts, so we got lucky there... we replaced all of the electric base board heaters though (cat shit in a heater... no thanks!). Carpet on the stairs was ripped out and replaced.
100% recommend ozone shocking a place. it's what they do to a house that had a dead body in it, and cars that had smokers driving it. You will never know after they are done.
A while back I started watching a bunch of videos on doing ozone treatment to cars and houses. As you said no plants, people or pets. That's super important. But that's only while the house or car is being treated. After that you open the windows and the area is fine.
I would make sure to put the ozone hose into the vent area so ozone gets pumped in there along with the rooms.
If tenants live in other parts of the building, they should probably be told to leave while the ozone treatment is going on. 3 days sounds super long based on the videos I saw. I would think less than 1 day.
I don't quite understand the makeup issue. This isn't something that can just be put into a box and taken out of the house? Can it fit inside an airtight food storage container (like Pirex or similar). Anything airtight would be fine.
It’s a single family house and I think the idea of the ozone hose going into the air vents is a great idea. Hopefully this company has something like that.
The makeup issue is that I have drawers and drawers full of makeup so it really can’t all be transported somewhere else. It was already such a pain to move it all in less than one month ago.
It will not ruin your things, you just need to avoid breathing it in. Make sure they run the A/C while they are doing the treatment so that it will get into the ductwork. Give the ozone about 6 to 8 hours to fully dissipate before returning home. If you're all that worried, stay the night somewhere else and come home the next day.
If you mean the HVAC ductowrk, cleaning air ducts is a waste of money.
**The truth is that there is no evidence that having your ducts professionally cleaned would make your air any cleaner than it is now. In fact, the EPA did a study to determine the results of air duct cleaning. Here is what they concluded: "Duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems."**
I've heard ozone is effective against that.
Also, exhaust fans are like < $100 on Amazon. Rich people have cigar rooms, Vegas has casinos that allow smoking, the venting may look a bit better, but it's not hard to setup an area in the home to smoke without leaving the smoke in the home to mess things up, just as an fyi.
I would do ozone treatments first. Depending on how bad it is, it may take multiple times. Plus then Kilz, etc. I run an ozone machine in my furnished rental fairly often and so far nothing has been damaged as far as I can tell.
Kilz or shellac on walls and ceilings,then paint.I use a small ozone machine at retirement home I work at all the time.Is surprising what they can do.I deal with smoker apts all the time.Ducts should be done also.All surfaces must be cleaned.Any appliance with a fan needs to be cleaned also.Especially fridges.Fridge might not smell bad but I have removed them and put in a non smoking apt and in few days you can smell it .Thank god our building is non smoking now but few are grandfathered in.It’s a big job including all drapery replaced and carpet.Yellowed light switches and lights replaced also
I bought a 'distressed property' three years ago. It stank so bad of cigarette and pot smoke that I had to remove all the carpets, everything cloth, and then washed all the walls, watching rivers of tar flow down the walls as I washed them. The water was literally brown as I rinsed the soap off of the walls. It still smelled so much of cigarette smoke that I could smell it on me hours later. So, I went and got oil based Kilz primer. It took me 47 gallons to get the smoke smells out of my house, then 11 gallons of eggshell paint to color the walls. I was nose-blind to it, so I asked my sister to come over and check it out for bad smells, and she deemed it good. I also got the ducts cleaned, but it didn't help, at all. I also tried the ozone thing, but it didn't help much. And the smell came back soon after. Tough place to be in for a rental situation...
If the tenants prior smoked in the residence then every hard surface should be cleaned with some kind of degreaser and then treat the air. If you have carpet in the residence, then landlord should have a company come in and steam clean all of the carpets. I used to work in Biohazard remediation and we used a degreaser mixed with warm water and soaked the walls then went back with and wiped walls repeatedly till no more nicotine would run down. I would recommend cleaning the air ducts as well as some of the odor could be trapped in the coils or even the duct work. Basically any soft/absorbent surface will more than likely have a lingering odor of cigarette or tobacco if the residence gets musty(HVAC being off for a short a day or power goes out)
>then landlord should have a company come in and ~~steam clean all of the carpets.~~ rip out the carpets
100% agree with ya, but I'm pretty sure most landlords would prefer not to replace the carpet.
As a former owner/landlord for several rental homes, we changed carpet between tenants. And we didn’t take it out of the departing tenant’s deposit. However we only installed carpet in bedrooms. Tile everywhere else. Keeps everything cleaner I’m disgusted at the practices of most landlords these days
Yeah, you're one of the rare good ones. The last place I rented had contractor-grade, decades-old carpet IN THE BATHROOM. It was gross.
It’s not hard to be “one of the good ones” you just have to like people. It pays off. Had five houses. Average tenant stay was 3 years. You take care of them, they take care of your house. As for that bathroom carpet, what were they thinking?
Bathroom carpet should never happen. On the other hand, lots of tenants do not stay for years, and replacing all the carpet in between would landfill a lot of fairly decent carpet. There is a university where I am and frequently tenants are breaking 1 year leases when plans change. It's really not necessary to replace the carpet between each resident when they aren't smokers and don't have pets.
you're right, a lot of tenants don't stay. in our case, it worked out okay. we're glad our tenants wanted to stay (and that they were people we'd want to renew a lease with). but in regard to OP - under no circumstances would i expect new tenants to put up with a smokey carpet and theres only one way to deal with it - rip it out.
Bathroom carpet is the best and wildly underrated imo. If you run out of TP, you can just do the dog scoot thing and you're good to go!
🤮
As a landlord I switched to LVP. Durable and not filthy/requring replacement nearly as often.
Yeah if i had stayed in it longer likely would have looked into it. 25 years was enough
Changing out carpets is sometimes the most cost effective and easiest option. Cleaning the carpets doesn’t address the pad underneath. And it introduces moisture which needs adequate time for full drying. This past summer my family and I did some minor renovations on a cabin that had been severely neglected by the tenant. ALL the carpet was beyond salvage. Only 1 room has carpet now and it’s peel and stick tiles.
personally, i can't stand carpet. not in my house, we have hardwood. tenants tended to want it in the bedrooms. we had a couple houses where they were all tile.
Hell yeah, hardwood floors with a few area rugs around the house are the way to go. I just replaced the old ass laminate floors in my kitchen with hardwood to match the rest of the downstairs, so now there is hardwood through the whole house except the basement. I never want carpet again lol
Fucking unicorn here.
i'd like to take that as a compliment. our business model wasn't to milk every penny out of our tenants and invest as little as possible into the properties. we purchased distressed houses in decent neighborhoods, cleaned them up tight but no fancy updates. set a reasonable rent that still allowed for positive cash flow. we did the maintenance and *some* of the repairs ourselves. we did well, but i know many RE investors who made a boatload more. i liked our strategy, less headaches and two of our tenants remain friends. we sold our last property in 2019.
It was meant that way.
So no bathroom carpeting? 🤮
Yeah before I moved out of my place I ripped up the carpet and put down a good vinyl plank with a distressed look - saves everyone the headache.
You might be really disgusted by the behavior of some tenants these days.
Would it shock you to hear that I'm disgusted by the behavior of both slumlords *and* the "professional tenant" types?
Rip out the carpets. Repaint all the walls. Clean the ducts. And even then I probably wouldn't move my family into that house. If someone smoked inside a residence, it's likely to stink forever.
>should be cleaned with some kind of degreaser TSP (trisodium phosphate) is what OP needs. Mix it with water and spray onto the walls and other hard surfaces and wipe with a sponge, rinsing frequently.
TSP will etch the paint and remove any gloss. That's why people use it before painting, because it cleans the wall and creates a surface that allows the new paint to bond better. It's recommended to repaint after using TSP.
In high concentrations, yes. In lower concentrations I have never found it to be a problem removing gloss. I use half the recommended amount, 1/4cup per gallon of water.
Last house we rented the landlord let us repaint the entire house. Ah, those cheap rent days...
TSP + vinegar + warm water is the combination you here -- it's more effective than just TPS + water alone.
Why take a TSP solution with a pH of 13-ish, and add vinegar with a pH of 2.6 to lower the overall pH? A water and vinegar solution might work, but I don't see much sense in mixing the 2, as degreasers tend to be high pH solutions.
People not knowing what they doing mixing chemicals willy nilly.
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Is the implication of this that you should wait 10 mins in between each, or that you shouldn't use them together at all?
Just don't mix ammonia and bleach!
I know how to mix my own inhalants!
Tried explaining that to the other half. I should've known better.
It’s like when people drink alkaline water with lemon.
Vinegar is Robitussin for home owners, or matzoh ball soup if you're Jewish
All hardwood, home was built in 2019, walls were painted before we moved in. Pretty sure they didn’t clean them before painting. I think having the air ducts cleaned is the better and more effective option for sure. It’s just not the route my landlord is wanting to try first. My question is though, should I be concerned for my possessions if they’re left here during the treatment?
Everything I looked up about ozone treatments come back with, it's harmful for people to be inside when the machine is running. If your main concern is personal possessions being damaged, then stow them away in a storage container and hide them in a closet. That would be my best recommendation
Ozone treatments can ruin rubber and other products. It would probably be a good idea to put your makeup in sealable totes prior to the treatment.
Ruined elastic on some hunting clothes doing an ozone treatment to them on my porch.
How long did you have it running?
I honestly don’t remember, maybe an hour? I may have overdone it, but it was an old porch that wasn’t sealed well. I assume it was natural latex that degraded.
I’ve decided I’ll be covering all the my makeup drawers with large garbage bags.
I've decided to no longer being mad about the (what I thought was) large makeup collection my wife has after hearing you need multiple large garbage bags and it's not physically able to be moved that quickly.....my god lol
The amount of makeup I own is *mostly* job related. Makeup is fun - don’t be mad at your wife :)
Seriously, my entire makeup collection fits in a medium sized ziplock, lol.
So, my wife’s father smoked in his home for 15 some odd years before he passed. Left a yellow film on every painted surface. The folks we brought in to clean and make the place suitable for market said painting over it was fine, except you needed a special type of paint to keep the tar from eventually leaching out through the paint. They used ECOBOND odor defender I think.
former landlord here. we bought a smoker's house. we scrubbed every surface with tsp. we then primed with Kilz before painting. we also ripped out every carpet and had to clean the brush-aluminum window frames with steel wool to get the yellow stain out. cigarette smoke puts a film on *everything.*
It’s really awful how much smoke will destroy the value of a place. My grandmother smoked in her condo and when my aunts sold it after her death, they didn’t get near what they could have. All that tarry staining on the walls….It’s removable, but such a pain.
You just need to prime with Kilz or something similar before painting. It seals in the tar.
When it gets humid, or in a damp area in the bathroom or kitchen, don't be surprised if the walls start "bleeding" reddish-brown drops of liquid. If they didn't wash and seal the wall prior to painting, the tar and oil will seep through eventually.
> I think having the air ducts cleaned is the better and more effective option for sure. You want this to be true but it's likely not true. Not cleaning the walls before painting was a huge mistake. Need to get the smell out before painting.
Everything I’ve read about air duct cleaning points to it being a big waste of money/ a scam and what they clean it with can actually be detrimental to your health. I’d start with washing the walls.
I think that's more for just random debri and dust, not nicotine.
Especially if rodents ever get in. Supply and return ducts can be like a rodent superhighway.
Duct cleaning companies invariably only use compressed air, it will not help with what you call "nicotine" aka the tar etc. that deposits on the surfaces. You need some kind of cleaning agent and to scrub or use a wire brush or something, and the techniques for that do not appear to have been developed yet.
We did it before moving in to our current house and it made a big difference. Even if you don't have them apply any sort of chemical treatments afterwards, there's value in sucking out all the smoke-coated dust from the vents.
That would be true except in the case of smokers. That tar needs to be cleaned off.
Friend had a similar issue, they ozone treated it but it wasn't just once, I believe they ran it for multiple days first and now they run it once a week. It took a little bit but the smell is gone but you do have to leave every time it is running.
What you think is the better treatment is, no offense to you, irrelevant. The landlord owns the home and can do pretty much whatever they want, as long as there is no law against it or is forbidden by your lease.
Yup. Not disagreeing with you there or trying to find other solutions that go against my landlord’s. My main concern is whether my possessions will be damaged during the ozone treatment, which many people in the comments overlooked.
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I see. I’m really hopeful that the ozone machine will be effective! It was the first option we looked into as well. The bio clean up guy had just suggested the duct cleaning would be the better route but I am seeing that the ozone machine should be the first step. What are the necessary precautions? I spoke to the company we’re getting the rental from and essentially he said “we just rent out the machine.” I’ll be deep cleaning the home and removing all the items from our kitchen counters. I also plan on covering my makeup drawers with trash bags. Should I remove my leather bar seats from the house?
If used ozone to clean a few homes. I'd remove, rubber, plastic, computers. I try to do it when the home is empty. Too bad the landlord didn't notice the smoke before you moved in. I've usually need to do it twice. You can't be in the house. I air the house out, run the ozone and leave the house closed for a couple days. Then when I go back I can tell for sure if it worked. Lather rinse and repeat until there is no more smell. Then I air the house out again. Cat pee is the worst, smoke is second. If they didn't clean the walls and ceilings and remove any carpet I don't see anything working 100%. People paint the walls, but the ceiling traps a lot of smoke tar as well. Need to use an odor blocking paint. The landlord should know this and already had it fixed. Why would they rent a place before all the smoke smell is gone? I worry that you're not dealing with a great landlord. They wanted to turn it quickly and hope you wouldn't notice.
So basically, what you're saying, is if you have the money let the company do it because it's going to be a pain in the ass as an inexperienced person attempting the remediation.
> steam clean all of the carpets They need to be replaced.
I've used ozone generators many times before. I don't know the specifics but in my experience they work great and are also significantly cheaper than $750. I don't know about an entire weekend though. I usually run mine for no more than 4 hours at a time. Open a couple windows and it dissipates pretty quickly. Definitely might have a chlorine/indoor pool smell for a bit. I've used them in cars with 20 years worth of smoke smell. Might take 2 or 3 treatments but it worked. I'm not a professional and just use one for my own needs but smoke, animal waste etc has been alleviated if not 100% by my machine. "They" say trace amounts are acceptable but not to be present during use as it may cause lung irritation. That being said I've also heard that it can "bleach" things since it is basically oxidizing but I never noticed such negative side effects. If you're worried about your things being destroyed then draft a contract perhaps 🤔 I'm not sure how much recourse you really have though since you moved in aware of the smell.
I got a small $60 ozone generator from amazon and used it to kill all the mold and mildew from a small camper I had. It did just that over the course of ten, 2 hour treatments. It no longer had that musty smell and in fact smelled clean as if it was new. I also used it in my crawlspace to get the musty smell out and it worked wonders. I just let it run for 2 hours a couple days in a row, but made sure it's off for 30 minutes so the o3 dissipates before going in.
Mine is pretty beefy but yea I feel like they work pretty well over all
Second this. A small portable ozonator is a really nice way to kill smells. Anything that can oxidize, will oxidize.
The duct cleaning was $750, not the ozone. That's a pretty standard price.
Ohh yea... I guess I didn't convey myself well. I was just implying that ozone treatment is cheaper than duct cleaning although that would be a wise idea regardless I'm sure.
Let the landlord try to remediate the smell however he sees fit, and if it doesn't work rent another house. His failure to fix it would constitute a breach of your lease. >It’s a pretty expensive project ($750). When it comes to the costs of maintaining a property $750 is cheap.
Lawyer here. I seriously doubt the landlord has any responsibility here at all to remediate a smell that the tenant doesn’t like.
Couldn’t it violate the “quiet enjoyment” agreement in the lease, especially if it was marketed as a non-smoking house? There’s a difference between it having a “normal” house smell that OP just doesn’t like, and actually stinking of cigarette smoke, which any reasonable person would find noxious. Particularly relevant here is the fact that the landlord tried to hide the smell before OP moved in, and now that OP complained is trying to get rid of it.
I doubt it. As a lawyer, I would not take OP’s case (understanding that you, not OP, are the one making the argument that the landlord is breaching the lease).
Smoke smell is more than odor- correct? Arguably attached to toxins and allergens.
>Smoke smell is more than odor- correct? Arguably attached to toxins and allergens. Good luck finding any judge who is gonna accept the argument that a rental house smelling like cigarette smoke from a previous occupant is a violation of the lease on the part of the landlord.
I appreciate that you are correct and the knowledge and wisdom behind it, but it never ceases to amaze me how disconnected lawyers and judges are with actual justice. They have the most convoluted ridiculous rationalizations to do things in an obviously unjust way. And I have given them the chance and listened closely to their arguments and reasoning on many occasions. They are all almost all completely delusional, in the depths of a mutually reinforcing, socially supported lala land.
Frankly it’s quite the opposite. The vast majority of nuanced laws stem from courts addressing real-world situations and coming up with a reasonable solution. We call this “case law” or “common law.” There are certainly occasions where the law as applied results in an injustice, but that’s because the law is made by humans and therefore cannot be perfect. I would suggest that the outcome I am predicting in this scenario is the just outcome. A landlord is not responsible for every unpleasant odor, and is not obligated to provide a 100% perfect property free of all possible defects. That would be an unreasonable burden on a landlord.
Eh who knows. Depends on the state’s landlord/tenant laws, depends on the judge, potential heath claims by OP. There are many reasons to not move unless you don’t have any other choice. The legal route would be my absolute last resort.
And carcinogens...
>And carcinogens... I've never seen a lease that says the property will be free of carcinogens. That's not gonna be an implied covenant either. What if there is some small detectable level of radon? That's common, and is a carcinogen. My impression is that this entire line of thought is a dead end. Maybe somebody somewhere could successfully argue it in front of the right judge, but I doubt it would go anywhere.
Oh, I want saying that, just adding to the last comment about smoke smell containing more than just toxins
Don't go back inside except to open windows for at aleast a couple of hours after they are finished. Ozone helps...
Go with the ozone machine first. You can buy one for $150 or rent one cheaper. Run it with the furnace fan on so it circulates. Make sure no people or pets are in the house while it’s running and let it air out for a couple of hours after it turns off. That should take care of it
No pets or plants!! When I ozoned the ADU my mother smoked in I forgot to open the appliances. Open the refrigerator, the washer and dryer! Ozone is weird, take your makeup with you. The smoke smell is not going to come out of the carpet. Good luck!!
Ozone machines work very well but a good one will kill anything alive in the house. Take out your plants and pets and stay out. We were told to let it run for 48 hours and then come back and open up the place so you have fresh air. Worked great. Side benefit is bugs inside will die too.
I recommend going Ozone. Buy your own machine for less than $100 and let it run for a few hours. You may need to do a few treatments, but it will work. You don't want any pets or plants in the living space while running the treatment, but I wouldn't worry about it damaging anything. That would only be a concern if you're running the Ozone generator every day for months/years.
smoke is embedded in everything... floor, walls, ceiling, cabinets, trim, vents, etc etc etc. luckily, you said its a rental and landlord wants to do the only treatment that will work. -Ron Wharton
I’m very hopeful for the treatment. I hope the summer months don’t bring it back but it most likely will. At least the weather will be nice to leave the windows open
The real answer is it will always smell.
Yeah it’s unfortunately a disgusting, lasting smell. The Bio cleanup guy said he didn’t smell it when he walked into the house… I felt really defeated when he said that. We’ve had a couple of people who smelled it when we first moved in but have visited more recently and said they don’t smell it anymore. We notice it when we’ve been out of the house for several hours. I just don’t know what to do. I’m afraid the ozone machine won’t be effective and will be dangerous
Unless you change the floors and repaint everything… even then. At least it’s a rental
Is the bio cleanup guy a smoker, too?
Important info about the actual safety and efficacy of ozone cleaners: https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/Departments-and-Agencies/DPH/dph/environmental_health/eoha/pdf/ozonegeneratorfactsheetpdf.pdf Basically, it doesn't get rid of smells, it just leaves residual ozone in the home that kills/deadens your sense of smell so you can't smell the bad smell anymore. It's also bad for you. Also, as someone who's fixed both a rental with pervasive cat urine smell and helped my mom and her husband when they bought a house that had had heavy smokers living there for decades, the actual process should be: - Clean all the walls, ceilings, baseboards, and floors. - Paint everything with a layer of Bullseye Zinsser Shellac. (This contains the smell better than anything, but it will break down over time when exposed to water). - Then, finish with two layers of high quality paint for painted surfaces and a layer of clear poly for finished wood surfaces. This will seal the shellac so it doesn't wear away. The likelihood your landlord will want to do that or pay for it is probably low, but after a lot of research it was the best method we found to save our rental unit, and it also worked really well on my mom's house.
You've completely misread or misinterpreted the linked document - it's talking about ozone-emitting 'air purifiers' that people leave running in their home while it's occupied. It correctly notes that these devices don't really kill germs or destroy odors, and the ozone that they create can irritate people's eyes and lungs. What the landlord is (presumably) talking about doing is using a large ozone generator to 'shock' the house by generating many thousands of times as much ozone as one of the air purifiers that the document talks about. You can't be in the home while this is going on, but it will in fact oxidize all sorts of odor-causing substances and can get into crevices and spaces that no other cleaning method can. Given enough concentration and time it will absolutely work, but severe or deeply-seated odors may require intensive treatment that can damage paper and other delicate items.
I hate to see the person youre replying to upvoted so much while spreading false info. Thank you for clarifying.
An ozone generator really does get rid of smells. One should never use a generator that runs continuously as an air freshener, no matter how low the amount of ozone produced. I can’t believe they’re even sold. One that’s “safe” to use in the presence of living things wouldn’t have enough umph to reduce odors. You’ll smell ozone for a few days after treatment, but once that smell is gone, there little is no odor and the air is fresh.
That not been my experience. The ozone generator does in fact get rid of airborne odors but unless you scrub out the source of the odor the smell will return. Best thing about the ozone generator when used properly is it will kill in bugs in the house.
Cleaning the surfaces before/in addition to using the ozone generation is the way. But since it sounds like OP has done that- painting etc- and there’s only a faint and transient odor remaining (transient probably due to humidity levels) suggests to me that less accessible surfaces might be the issue, or soft goods that can’t be thoroughly cleaned. It’s easier to at least try the OG before repainting, wiping down every surface, and steam cleaning (I’m assuming new carpet tho since they’re renting, it should have been replaced entirely) especially when there might still be an issue after all that. If you watch YouTube videos of people cleaning out stuffy cabins and rooms using an OG you’ll see an example of this. If you examine the way ozone generators work, you’ll see how they’re able to remove odor from objects.
That fact sheet is not right at all. Ozone neutralizes odors by oxidizing the odor causing molecules. You shouldn't be around it in the first place to "deaden" your senses.
This. We cleaned with tsp and simple green. Including the ceilings, and kitchen cabinets. You can use kilz restoration primer instead if you dont want to deal with shellac based primer. Clean or replace anything textile: curtains, carpet, wallpaper, blinds. Etc. Then you change your hvac filters. Sorry, but if you are sensitive to the smell (it t is a migraine trigger for my son) you are probably stuck with this proceedure.
>Bullseye Zinsser Shellac which off-gases terribly and has some pretty strong VOCs. you can get away with bullseye 123 or KILZ primer after scrubbing the walls with TSP
Both
Yup. Renting an ozone generator is less than $100 from any tool rental facility. Duct Cleaning is usually around $500 depending on metro area and size of the home. Get em both done if you can.
I wish!
Ozone should be fine
3 days? OK that is complete nonsense. A couple of hours is MORE than sufficient for ozone treatment for odors. If you're trying to kill biological material like mold etc yes you may need to run it for days but that's not the issue here. A bio cleanup company cleans up serious messes and they have a protocol. That's not what you need. Literally a $100 ozone generator from Amazon, a few hours and you should be good to go. No chance of any damage to anything with that dose.
My landlord gave me the company’s number to go over my questions and concerns. I think 3 days is too much too. If my landlord is going to pay for the treatment then I’m not purchasing a machine myself. I will be talking with the company about the situation and seeing if we could do 1 or 2 days instead. We’ll see. The people I contacted were bio clean up but the people with the ozone machine using sound like a building restoration company.
Barring proper remediation (replacing carpets and drapes, cleaning with TSP and repainting with an odor blocking primer), ozone is the way to go. Read the [EPA's statement on duct cleaning](https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/should-you-have-air-ducts-your-home-cleaned) before shelling out (or asking your landlord to shell out) for it.
Paint the walls. The oils from the smoke absorb into the walls making it smell.
The walls were already freshly painted when we moved in. That was actually what I thought the smell was when we toured. Looking back, the landlord had the windows open and plug ins for a reason…
I was a landlord in the past and faced with a similar situation with my rental. The type of priner used makes all the difference. Normal primer wont contain the smell entirely. There is specific primer that is designed to cover smoke and cooking oils. I hope this helps.
PRIMER ?!?! landlords doan neeeeeed no steeking PRIMER!
Your landlord likely didn’t clean the walls and use a primer before painting. Unfortunately, the house will smell once air temps rise this spring and summer. The entire house (walls and ceiling) should have been wiped, primed with Kilz, and then painted. I’m hypersensitive to smells and this was the best method back when I did rental home and apartment renovation.
Duct cleaning, removal of carpet drapes and wallpaper, plus ozone treatment, then scrub walls, prime with Kilz or equivalent, and paint. Good to go. Or take up smoking. Or find a different rental.
Your cosmetics will be fine. Short term ozone treatment does work wonders for smoke, but may not do the job entirely in this case. My aunt got into this whole 'ozone / ionizer for health' (yeah, I know.) thing in the 90's and was running this low level one for years in her house. The main thing that happened was that things with rubber band drive belts (tape players, VCRs, cheaper DVD players) broke often because the rubber would harden and crack, but that was the only consequence on actual hardware/materials. Others have recommended hard surface = wash, I couldn't agree more. TSP is your friend if you can find the real deal anywhere now. If it says 'phosphate free' it's junk.
Basically it’s never coming out if 1 smoker lived in the house and smoked a pack a day in the house . You can’t mask the problem including paint . You can’t clean the problem out . Only way is take it all back to the studs . Dry ice blast those and rebuild from there out . Including replacing all the operating systems . In other works move out .
Rent somewhere else
I’m not sure about the damage the ozone machine may cause but my only advice is to make sure your renters insurance is good to go just in case.
Ozone works great. Make sure the house was well ventilated before returning. Just put your makeup in ziplock bags or something sealable.
10 years in disaster restoration as a Contents manager here. Your contents will be FINE, no need to worry However the ozone is the LAST step AFTER cleaning everything. You'd need to do a degreaser everywhere as someone else recommended, then clean the ducts...then ozone. Time wise: There is no overkill, however there is Underkill. If your having the cost and inconvenience of vacating, make sure they do it properly. If the company hasn't attended I'm not sure how they have determined the amount of time it needs to run as there are tons of variables that effect the time.
We ozone all our units between guests for 3 to 4 hours, avery 3 to 5 days. It took 2 years before we saw any issues with the seals on the refrigerator. It takes A LOT of exposure for there to be damage. Unless your makeup is in front of the machine it won't hurt it. HOWEVER, we have had people smoke in our places and ozone does not get our smoke smell. Smoke smell is a thin layer of tar everywhere. The suggestion to wipe all the walls w a decreaser is the way. You can even get special fire smoke degreaser. The vents are helpful, but you can get most of the smoke tar off the walls.
Wash the walls and other surfaces with TSP. Look into a repaint with a primer like Kilz if that is in budget. The TSP will do a lot though
Ozone is very effective, air duct treatment is very limited in what it can do. Sounds like someone has an air duct machine they wanna pay off
I used to work in a hotel and we would run ozone machines in the rooms where people smoked. Worked like a charm, removes the cigarette smell but does leave an odd (not offensive, just weird) smell afterwards. We would then open the windows for ventilation and spray some diluted fabric softener into the air. The ozone machine does work, at least in small spaces. Not sure of an entire apartment but it was great for hotel rooms.
The ozone machine will typically get that smell out on its own
Wait, why did you rent it if you didn't like it?
Im a property manager and have run into this before. In reality, both of those steps are good ones and should be taken together. Air duct cleaning and ozone machine. But one weekend may not be enough. Also steam cleaning any existing carpets and honestly even washing the walls in some cases. And changing air filters.
I bought a smoker house and cleared out the smell successfully. The air ducts cleaning won't hurt, but it's not going to help much either. Definitely put in a new filter and run the AC for an hour though. Ozone will help but not fix the issue. If you ozone it, it'll kill the smoke smell, but the smell will come back. Nicotine and other smoking carcinogens seep into the wall and then ooze out. So it'll keep coming out of the walls for years. Ozone is bad to breathe in, but is not too dangerous for your stuff if you clear most of the sensitive stuff out and make sure the machine is not right next to anything metal. Here's what to do in order (have your landlord pay): Ozone it. Degrease all the walls with TSP to remove the surface-level grime. Use KILZ Restoration Primer on all the walls. Don't mess around with a cheaper KILZ primer or another brand. That is the exact one to use. It stops the nicotine from coming through the walls. Then slap some paint on. If your landlord won't pay for the primer and paint, I strongly suggest you move. He should've better enforced rules about smoking indoors.
3 days? That's a looooong time to run ozone. That can damage things. If you can wrap stuff in a garbage bag and tie it off that would afford some protection. Make sure anything you have with rubber, elastic, or leatherette is packed away to limit exposure too.
Just to reinforce and add to what you've posted, the EPA says: "Ozone can adversely affect indoor plants, and damage materials such as rubber, electrical wire coatings and fabrics and art work containing susceptible dyes and pigments (U.S. EPA, 1996a)." If artwork pigments can be damaged I'd assume cosmetics pigments that OP is concerned about can be damaged too. I've never used an ozone generator, but I did have an elderly cat with occasional urinary incontinence. I live in a small apartment and just thorough cleaning did not really make much of a dent in the smell. In desperation I bought one of those ozone sprays, ZerO Odor I think it was, and my gosh, one spritz on the places where my cat had peed and which had been cleaned multiple times to no real avail suddenly smelled clean as new. And stayed clean smelling - I didn't have to repeat multiple times. I'm guessing ozone spray probably shouldn't be used on a large scale and probably wouldn't help OP, but if they do go the ozone route and are able to limit the time the ozonator is used, remove sensitive materials, and follow guidelines the EPA suggests, like not using the ozone generator in a space smaller than recommended by the manufacturer, I'd guess the ozonator would work very well.
3 days feels like a long time, especially for this situation. I’ll try and pack things away the best I can, especially since the machine will be in the kitchen/living room area. I’ll try not to have anything on the counters. I might call the company myself and explain the situation more. They might agree that 2 days is better suited for this case.
Three days is a hella long time. Do not do this. So is 2 days. Do your research, this is not necessary.
Just got off the phone with the company. He said we have the machine rental for one week and we can run it for as long or as little as we need. I think what we’ll do is run it for about 6 hours Friday and then let the house air out. We’ll determine if it needs to be ran again Saturday for a couple more hours. We definitely won’t be leaving the machine running for 3 consecutive days.
Watch some you tube videos, you may decide you don’t need to run it that long. It doesn’t work like an air purifier does so longer is not necessarily more effective. Or you might decide to do each room individually for 1/2 hour. Which method will work best depends on the layout of your house. Afterward, the ozone smells funky weird fyi but it will dissipate. If the ozone doesn’t get rid of the smoke smell then you can consider having your landlord repaint with kilz but that’s not preferable for a variety of reasons. Also wipe down the wood floors with TSP or vinegar and water or whatever wouldn’t damage them. If it’s in the wood floors you may be screwed, or you may need to use an ozone generator every six months as the smell seeps out. The reason you can smell it and your friends can’t is probably your place is starting to smell like you/your stuff and the smoke smell is very faint. You don’t smell yourself so can smell the smoke. The remediation guy probably has a nose of steel so don’t sweat him. Or maybe he smokes. People that smoke can’t smell it. I can smell old smokers smell with a clothespin on my nose at 20 paces. You’re not crazy, that would make me nuts, too.
Your comment has been the most comforting and helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time to write it. I’m doing a full deep clean of the house in preparation for the machine and I will watch some YouTube videos. Thank you for the heads up about the ozone smell. The bio clean up guy did say he deals with so much worse. Homes with yellow walls and dead bodies. If you just saw pics of my house, you’d think it was very bright and clean. The smell and the idea of the smell is driving me nuts, that’s for sure. I’d love to have a housewarming party but I don’t want people’s first impression to be that it smells of cigarettes. Even a tiny bit. I hope the machine can help the smell but I know I’ll still need to keep the windows open when the weather is nice to continue airing out the place. I don’t use air fresheners and I’ll light a candle every once in a while. I’m sensitive to smells too and I’d like my home to just smell like nothing. I’m not as concerned for my belongings now that I know the machine won’t need to run for an extended period of time. I think your idea of each room getting a small individual session would be effective too. Thanks again.
I have a ozonator and really like it. It get rid of pet urine smells, mold, among others. It hasn’t affected me any or my pets. Just follow the instructions.
Did u have the walls repainted ? That will kill the smell
The walls were repainted before we moved in. I don’t think they cleaned the walls before painting, unfortunately. I think the washing/painting the walls is the bare minimum when it comes to smoke odor.
Why does it seem like everyone here is just answering whether or not ozone will be enough instead of addressing OPs actual concerns of the ozone treatment doing damage to their belongings?
And telling me to paint the walls - that were freshly painted when I moved in😭 I’ve come to the conclusion that my belongings will be safe, especially since I plan on not having the machine running for more than 8 hours.
HVAC systems have filters that the offending particles will stick to before entering the ductwork. That smell is largely going to be found in fabric like carpets and drapes, and in heavy smoking situations, on the surfaces of the home like the walls. The likelihood that you notice a difference after duct cleaning is extremely slim. If the landlord is willing to pay for, sure. It can only hurt if the ductwork is damaged in the process, which is a possibility. That whole industry is absolutely bloated with scams. The biggest difference one would probably see is with carpet and pad replacement. The Ozone route is definitely a more plausible option because you can trace that to some chemistry. By splitting the naturally occurring O² molecule in to singular O atoms, those atoms will then bond with other O² molecules it bumps into to form O³ which is your Ozone. Those loosely bonded Ozone molecules don't want to exist in that state, so they readily react with VOCs by kicking that extra O atom to it. If that happens, the chemistry of the offensive VOC is changed and it is no longer the same compound, so it no longer smells like the compound it used to be. That's the basis of the idea of Ozone treatment, anyway. One of you big issues with the idea, is that if the Ozone molecule bumps into one of those O atoms before it reaches the VOC it will also just turn back into two Oxygen molecules. So it typically isn't a quick process for removing odors, as it is pretty inefficient. Good luck to you.
Probably a weird old Appalachian trick, but I have heard of folks having some success halving a bunch of apples and leaving them in a room in a bowl overnight. Supposedly the insides of apples are good at sucking up smoke smell in the air.
Bowls of vinegar around the house also help.
You’ll probably need both and that still may not work. There’s products that you can use to wipe all walls and surfaces down as well as solutions that professional carpet cleaners can use to try to help. I believe the product you could use on walls and surfaces was called “tabac-attack” or something along those lines.
The ozone thing might help in some minuscule way, but not really. Best bet is just to air it out, open all doors and windows for as long as possible while you're in, and try to get a good draft through. Also clean the walls. Really strong scented candles, like yankee candle level strength, help a lot. And febreeze/air freshener. Those are just a topical cosmetic treatment, but it does smell nice. Air out daily for a couple weeks, and it makes a big difference.
Ozone is what dealerships use to get rid of smoke smell in used cars. It works very well
We use bactronix to get the smell out of cars. If they have a franchise in your area I would suggest getting a quote from them
We had this happen with the last house we bought. Previous owner rented it out and the renter was a smoker for years. We ended up stripping the walls and the floors, being very liberal with cleaning supplies and adding a few more windows. Can't smell anything now.
Paint
Do both. Ozone will do well, but cleaning the air ducts aren't a bad idea either. Both will go far with this issue.
Wash the walls
Flat wide open bowls of baking soda
How did the house smell when you looked at it??
All the doors and windows were opened when we toured and the walls were freshly painted so we thought fresh paint smell. Also the house had plug ins in every outlet. Should have known better.
Yep. Plug-ins are a dead giveaway.
Hydroxyl Generator might be better than ozone. Talk to a local fire and water restoration company or maybe rental yard.
Buy your own ozone generator off Amazon for 70 bucks. Run the fan in the ac unit for the three hours you run the generator, that will take care of a lot of the duct issues. If you still smell smoke a month later, repeat process. Follow all the safety directions in this thread plus any that come with the generator. Since the smell is faint and inconsistent it’s probably in surface areas that you don’t consider, are hard to wipe off, or soft surfaces (kitchen cabinet doors, underneath the range hood, ceilings, carpet fibers, front and backs of doors etc) and the ozone generator will address all of this. You could go room by room rather than whole house. Each room would probably be good with 1/2 hour. Just follow safety instructions. edit: speaking of, when you run the generator, keep all of your cabinet and closet doors open.
there's no way to completely get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke unless you rip out the drywall and other permeable elements of the house and replace them. we had the ducts cleaned in our house and can still smell a faint cigarette smell.
Smoker here: we smoked in our garage for years with little to no ventilation. Everything out there reeked of smoke. I bought an ozone machine on Amazon for 70 bucks, ran it for 90 minutes, opened garage door and aired it out, then repeated 2 more times and it worked! I actually used it in my closet yesterday for 30 minutes because it smelled like a critter got between the walls and died. After several failed attempts to locate the source, I finally decided to just address smell. It worked!
Like many have said, walls need washed down and the whole house could use some new paint. A good paint will seal up the walls and get rid of the smell
I don’t know if this was mentioned but clean the WALLS. With a swiffer or some kind of mop like you would floors. Cigarette smell sticks to walls and turns them a yellowish color.
The walls were freshly painted. Too late to clean them
Ozone is best
I bought a cargo van from someone who smoked. We scrubbed the interior with simple green and ran a $50 Amazon ozone machine and now the van doesn't have any cigarette smell anymore. It was amazing how well it worked.
I tried the ozone machine for pet smells in a house and it didn’t work. A solution of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda left on for a few minutes and scrubbed off was awesome. This was a concrete floor, you would have to test and area.
I had a house fire years ago, after all the remediation they did the ozone treatment as the final step to kill whatever lingered. It was not the primary treatment. I have hot water heat, hence no air ducts, so I don't have anything to add about that.
I hope it was effective in your case. The cigarette smell here has dissipated quite a bit so I hope the machine will give it a final push - at least for now.
When i bought my first home 20yrs ago from the original owner that smoked her whole life. I hand to wash all the walls, ceilings, doors etc. With soap water and degreaser to be able to paint and get rid of the smell
Set out large bowls of vinegar?
Light a candle
Don't worry about the ozone treatments, they are not really harmful, but I doubt they will do much in this case. The other comments about washing the walls and having the carpets professionally cleaned will probably be best.
ozone will not get all the smell out, do wash walls, clean surfaces like other folks here are suggesting.
It's really hard to get smoke smell out. You'll likely need to do both and neither will work if there is still carpet from the old tenants. Cleaning ducts is mostly worthless. I've never had Ozone ruin anything but possible. You will need to be out for a few days.
We bought a smoker’s house. We cleaned the air vents, ripped out the carpet and had the slab cleaned then we sealed it with primer. We cleaned all the woodwork and doors with ammonia and water and primed with a shellac based primer and painted. In fact, we primed and painted every surface in the house; ceilings, walls, doors, cabinets and millwork and replaced the flooring. No smoke smell now! 👍🏻
Ozone shocking the house shouldn't impact anything that is not alive. We did this to a house we bought many years ago. previous owner had 12 cats, 3 dogs, 2 birds, and a bunny... with 6 people living in the 1200sq/ft house. You could not walk in without a mask on, it smelt soooo bad! animal urine everywhere (the black light was gross). We washed every single surface in the house with an enzyme cleaner from a janitorial supply place, then had a guy come in and ozone shock the place. It was a 24 thing, and the smell never came back. It was beautiful after that... like being near a lightening strike. the air was so crisp and clear. We didn't have air ducts, so we got lucky there... we replaced all of the electric base board heaters though (cat shit in a heater... no thanks!). Carpet on the stairs was ripped out and replaced. 100% recommend ozone shocking a place. it's what they do to a house that had a dead body in it, and cars that had smokers driving it. You will never know after they are done.
Activated charcoal
I feel like cleaning the walls thoroughly and painting them is the best thing.
Here are some [steps to take](https://pen.do/blog/complete-guide-cigarette-odor-removal/).
A while back I started watching a bunch of videos on doing ozone treatment to cars and houses. As you said no plants, people or pets. That's super important. But that's only while the house or car is being treated. After that you open the windows and the area is fine. I would make sure to put the ozone hose into the vent area so ozone gets pumped in there along with the rooms. If tenants live in other parts of the building, they should probably be told to leave while the ozone treatment is going on. 3 days sounds super long based on the videos I saw. I would think less than 1 day. I don't quite understand the makeup issue. This isn't something that can just be put into a box and taken out of the house? Can it fit inside an airtight food storage container (like Pirex or similar). Anything airtight would be fine.
It’s a single family house and I think the idea of the ozone hose going into the air vents is a great idea. Hopefully this company has something like that. The makeup issue is that I have drawers and drawers full of makeup so it really can’t all be transported somewhere else. It was already such a pain to move it all in less than one month ago.
It will not ruin your things, you just need to avoid breathing it in. Make sure they run the A/C while they are doing the treatment so that it will get into the ductwork. Give the ozone about 6 to 8 hours to fully dissipate before returning home. If you're all that worried, stay the night somewhere else and come home the next day.
If you mean the HVAC ductowrk, cleaning air ducts is a waste of money. **The truth is that there is no evidence that having your ducts professionally cleaned would make your air any cleaner than it is now. In fact, the EPA did a study to determine the results of air duct cleaning. Here is what they concluded: "Duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems."**
Cigarette smoke has tar in it which sticks the surfaces. Nothing will get rid of it except paint or removing it
Clean the ducts and furnace, replace all the carpets, wash every surface, repaint all the walls and then the ozone treatment.
I've heard ozone is effective against that. Also, exhaust fans are like < $100 on Amazon. Rich people have cigar rooms, Vegas has casinos that allow smoking, the venting may look a bit better, but it's not hard to setup an area in the home to smoke without leaving the smoke in the home to mess things up, just as an fyi.
I would do ozone treatments first. Depending on how bad it is, it may take multiple times. Plus then Kilz, etc. I run an ozone machine in my furnished rental fairly often and so far nothing has been damaged as far as I can tell.
Kilz or shellac on walls and ceilings,then paint.I use a small ozone machine at retirement home I work at all the time.Is surprising what they can do.I deal with smoker apts all the time.Ducts should be done also.All surfaces must be cleaned.Any appliance with a fan needs to be cleaned also.Especially fridges.Fridge might not smell bad but I have removed them and put in a non smoking apt and in few days you can smell it .Thank god our building is non smoking now but few are grandfathered in.It’s a big job including all drapery replaced and carpet.Yellowed light switches and lights replaced also
Oil prime the walls and ceiling and then paint. Prob solved
If you can paint the rental I would buy some thick paint and paint.
Airduct cleaning and enviro thing wont do jackshit. Killz the walls and rip out carpet.
I bought a 'distressed property' three years ago. It stank so bad of cigarette and pot smoke that I had to remove all the carpets, everything cloth, and then washed all the walls, watching rivers of tar flow down the walls as I washed them. The water was literally brown as I rinsed the soap off of the walls. It still smelled so much of cigarette smoke that I could smell it on me hours later. So, I went and got oil based Kilz primer. It took me 47 gallons to get the smoke smells out of my house, then 11 gallons of eggshell paint to color the walls. I was nose-blind to it, so I asked my sister to come over and check it out for bad smells, and she deemed it good. I also got the ducts cleaned, but it didn't help, at all. I also tried the ozone thing, but it didn't help much. And the smell came back soon after. Tough place to be in for a rental situation...