Next door's kitchen ventilation

[cjmurray]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice on tackling a ventilation problem which is affecting our property.

In a 1930s-ish semi, our side is quite well ventilated; trickle vents on Velux windows, a constantly running humidistat dMEV in the bathroom, pull-cord axial in the kitchen which I'll be replacing with a humidistat when I get chance. Next door's doesn't appear to have anything. The windows are usually dripping in condensation.

So, the bathroom and upstairs spare bedroom in our property often smell of whatever next door's kitchen does, including cooking smells & cigarette smoke. I've tried to block off as much as I could at our side, but always wondered about the root cause since it's still a problem and I can't reach everywhere in the bathroom. Next door is a rental property and during a gap in tenants, I've noticed an air brick on the inside of the kitchen. The kitchen is a very rough-and ready extension onto the back of the property, so this air brick would once have been outside. That would very much explain why the air drawn through our property is coming from their kitchen, and would also explain why we can hear furniture moving around etc sometimes in the downstairs.

The technical side of my brain is telling me to get the landlord to block it off, however I get the feeling it might prove difficult to get them to do this. I left a note through the door with my details before the new tenants moved in, which hasn't come to anything. I contacted their agent (after a small amount of detective work on Rightmove) who didn't reply, twice, then asked me to remind them of the details of the property I was interested in, as if their generated reference number was meaningless and in fact there weren't any notes attached to it.

Is there much I can do to get this resolved? I haven't spoken to the current tenants yet as we haven't yet had the chance to say hello and I don't want the first conversation we have to involve a complaint about the place they've chosen to live in. I figure if anything, it contravenes Part F of building regs since the kitchen should vent to the outside, not into the fabric of the property.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

[drpepe]

i don't quite follow the layout and where the air brick is located relative to your house, but if it is venting into your house/subfloor, can you not just block it on your side?

 

[cjmurray]

Good point, I might not have detailed the location too well. I'll try to explain; if you look at the back of the property, with the neighbour on the left and our house on the right, their kitchen is entirely a ground floor extension. Part of our kitchen is also an extension. These parts which extend beyond the original properties don't share any common brickwork. The parts inside do share the party wall, as does the spare bedroom of each property on the 1st floor. The air brick is on their side, into their cavity wall, above where the kitchen used to be and below where their spare bedroom is. Their lean-to now joins the house above where the air brick is, therefore I get the impression it used to be outside and is now part of the inside. Our spare bedroom is maybe only 1m away from this. I guess the issue in filling the cavity on this side is with access; I couldn't get from the bottom of the house to the top of the house with any filling product to separate their air space from our air space without demolishing most of this side