Apartment house ventilation: will adding supply air solve tobacco smell problem?
For at least two years our life quality has been significantly reduced because our upstairs neighbor is a chain smoker and the smell is coming down to our apartment through ceiling structures. I've had enough and I'm now ready to do any kind of renovation to fix this problem.
The superintendent and a ventilation expert has already been twice, trying to balance the ventilation system so that we wouldn't have low pressure and the upstairs neighbor high pressure. Apparently they are just not able to fix the situation as the smoke/smell is coming down to our apartment.
The apartment house has a motorized exhaust leading to top of the building. In practice our apartment has two active exhaust outlets. They suck the air quite strongly. Then we have 3 supply air holes above windows, 1 passive supply air hole in sauna (leading to outside at the same height). 842
There is also one extra exhaust in the sauna but the suction in that is quite weak. Anyway, no matter how open the supply air holes are adjusted or what we do, the smoke is coming from upstairs to our apartment. Even if windows are open, there is still some smoke coming from up down, though of course not at all times we can keep our windows open.
We are not aloud to put a motor to boost air suction to the main exhausts. Because theoretically that will cause low pressure to all other apartments and all our apartment's adverse smells (such as cooking smells) will then theoretically go to all other apartments.
So far I could not really trust the superintendent or the ventilation expert. What they suggest is a complete renovation on our ceiling or the neighbours floor, to seal all possible holes which leak the smoke. However, that is extremely difficult and expensive as many rooms would have to be ripped open and renovated.
My main question is, if I were to add a motor to the one passive supply inlet, what will the result be? Will that create high pressure in our apartment and where will that high pressure air discharge to? Possible places are: to upstairs neighbor through the leaks in our ceilings, the 3 exhaust outlets in our apartment and theoretically also the inlets above our windows. 842