All the bathroom vents I know about vent through the roof. You could go to the town code official. Verify if this is allowed and if there is a permit.

@houssaon

thanks. they have solar panels on the roof so I think that’s why the vent is on the side.

I don't think this is a thing. If bathroom vents smelled..neighborhoods would all be stinky.

Plant something with a strong pleasant odor

Are you referring to the ceiling fan vent or the toilet stack vent? If stack vent, I too thought they should be on the roof.

That looks like a dryer vent.

I agree with arcy so I would need to know if this is actually an issue or you think it will be. Even with solar panels we have space for plumbing vents .

I wondered, too, how much odor can come from a bathroom. The smell from bath soap would seem to dissipate very quickly. I have smelled the strong soap smells from my neighbors shower when the breeze is blowing in the right direction. But it does not linger.

I doubt that it is venting the plumbing. That has to go straight up. It is a passive venting.

Or, does it vent a dryer, maybe? That looks to me like a dryer vent. In that case, it would smell like laundry products. I would not like someones scented laundry products to smell up my yard. It is hard to avoid that smell, especially on a Sunday evening (in a normal world) when folks are getting ready for school/work week. Sometimes you can smell it all over the neighborhood

I can understand how the smell of others is invasive. A run of the dryer for 30 minutes is more likely to be a nuisance than the smell of those strong soaps from the shower.

So many houses are built so very, very close to one another in these modern times that it is hard to get far enough away from each other.

Just standing in your own yard may likely make it seem as if you are standing in your neighbors window.,,,,because you probably are. It does appear that, if not for the fence that is exaclty the situation that you would find yourself in.

Your side yard looks much like at my son's house in Florida. You can stand in one of the bathrooms and look over to the kitchen of the neighbors . I have seen them getting up early and coming into the kitchen to get coffee and i Privacy fence, or not, the truth is that many of us are actually very close in proximity to our neighbors. Sometimes we can get intensely focused on those irritating things and they may loom larger than they really are.

I understand how it bothers you.

I have a neighbor who is a long, long story of just about everything negative that you might want to throw into the mix of who this person is. A true deplorable!

This person has found a way to engulf our house in smoke on a moments notice and completely at their will and with malice and no other purpose than to aim it at us like a volley . Now, there is a smell that gets into every fiber of everything. Smoke is pervasive. That is a long story that I wont labor you with.

We used to live in duplex where a toilet room in each side shared a common wall. Somewhere in that wall there was an air leak and these folks used lots of perfumes, they smoked and they all worked at restaurants and were always heating up left over restaurant food. It just seeped through somewhere and it was really invasive.

There are so many nuances of living so close to one another.

That's a standard flapper vent that is most often used for dryers but is frequently used for bath exhaust as well. Depending on wind, whatever comes out of that vent could certainly hang around between the two structures for a long time.

IIRC our code states that a side exhaust vent cannot be within 10' of an adjacent single story structure and something like 13' of a two story structure. Check your local code.

@kudzu9

@arcy_gw

@Kate

@Patricia Colwell Consulting

@opaone

@wednesday morning

it is a vent for the bathroom exhaust fan. the owner told me. it is not for a dryer.

yes there is a smell that lingers. thats how i first noticed it. thought something was burning. it has a smoky/metal/soap smell and it lingers into our yard. it is an irritating smell. it doesnt dissipate fast. if the wind is stronger the smell will travel in front of our garage.

and yes, under the bathroom exhaust fan is the bathroom window so it does feel really close to the neighbor.

it has been since early 2021 we smell it every day. owner says nothing is wrong and they can do a ”courtesy cleaning” to help with the smell.

owner has solar panels on roof so i assumed that is why they could not put bathroom exhaust on the roof. so we have been experiencing it for a few months now. i am not making up the smell - it truly lingers and i tried to give the neighbors a few months to look into it but nothing changed and they say it is fine and in working order.

the owner also has a loud window a/c three feet from the rear fence. they said they do not need to comply with setback because it is a window a/c, not a fixed a/c.

ive tried to read up on the CA codes (ca mechanical code and plumbing code) and i get so lost. says 3 feet from property line but then says exhaust should not discharge on public walkway, or near doors/windows or occupied spaces.

thanks.

If you're smelling something, it could be from other sources than that vent....

Bathroom fan exhaust stink would be intermittent. Agree with kudzu9 that something else is the probable source.

Yes, we understand that the neighbor TOLD YOU it is a vent for a bathroom fan, but how do you know he/she is not fibbing?

It is hard for us armchair quarterbacks to figure out what is going on. An onsite inspector is really the only solution.

That's an absolute dryer vent smell you describe, no matter what your neighbor is telling you. The could have linked the two illegally, or simply aren't being honest about what's going on in the bathroom (many people have laundry in the bathroom area in places like CA that don't have basements).

I suppose you could fight fire with fire and plant a bunch of those terrible boxwood bushes that smell exactly like cat urine, but that might be a case of the cure being worse than the disease ...

It does sound more like a dryer vent smell than a bathroom vent smell. I'm (overly) sensitive to smells and as a result I always use unscented laundry detergent. But some of my surrounding neighbors are normal people and use scented laundry detergents and I can often smell them in my yard even though there are no visible dryer vents near my property. I wonder if they installed a stacked washer and dryer and that's why it's venting so high up. Not sure what you can do unless you can find a code violation and get a town/city inspector to enforce it.

A digital thermometer's remote sensor could be put on a pole and discretely moved into position just below the vent. If the temperature is higher than expected for a normal interior, the dryer option is most probable.

Also, if there is no PVC stack on the roof where the closet stack should terminate, then sewer odor is entirely possible.

A third option that comes to mind is a sewer-less toilet that burns toilet waste.

Ok thanks. i filed a complaint with the city. see what they say. they will do an onsite inspection.

Good luck. Either you're right that something is in violation and your neighbor is going to be PO'd at you, or you're wrong and your neighbor is going to be PO'd at you. But something tells me that this might not be the best relationship in the first place.

@Circus Peanut, thank you. I have been insisting to anyone that would listen that we must have feral cats peeing under our back deck, because I keep getting a whiff of something.

I also put a boxwood in a planter on either side of the stairs last fall. I bet that is what I smell! I had no idea.

I really appreciate the heads up. Tomorrow those things are moving to the far side of my property.

@Marigold Ha! There were boxwoods right outside our living-room window when we bought this house in the summertime, and we thought for a long while that all the neighborhood cats were using our foundation as a litter box (we have indoor cats and recognize the smell). Even our roofers thought we had something wrong with the sewer. It turned out to be those gawdawful boxwoods! Move them far away from anyone's nose, with my blessing. :)

Can you install an outdoor fan that will blow upwards to get rid of the vent air?

Commenting to follow as there is something fishy with this whole thing. My bathroom exhaust vents vent into my backyard so are sometimes running when I am outside and I may smell shampoo but nothing else, and even that only briefly. A plumbing stack would go through the roof, and a dryer should smell like a dryer... I did have a client who complained that their exhaust fan always smelled bad so they never used it. New owner bought the house and the fan caught on fire...

kudzu9:

I thought meth lab right away too. Fishy.

Eww Joseph. Possible but I hope not for their sake.

Could be an animal has died in the vent.

Can you just make your fence taller so it blocks the direction of air flow from the vent?

I shouldn’t laugh, but growing up in the country, farms amd confinements could be miles away and you’d never get away from it. Then add in the manure spreaders working on every field in the entire Midwest, I don’t know if that vent would warrant a second glance.

Maybe they’re pot smokers. Pot smells burny/plasticy at times, and talk about a smell that lingers. We’ve been driving down the street with the windows down and my husband will point at a house and say ”they’re smoking dope in there”. Or walking down the street, he can tell which house it’s coming from.

Thanks everyone. the city came back and said the adu does not have a permit so the neighbors will need to apply for a permit. as far as the smell, the city said there is no noxious odor smell so nothing to be done for now. so looks like we need to deal with it.

i like the outdoor fan idea. the fence going up taller - it can go up one foot i think. if we make a taller fence i dont know if we can add to it? do we need the neighbor’s permission? they probably are not happy with us now...

"they probably are not happy with us now..."

So you didn't solve your original issue, but you did get the neighbor in trouble. I wouldn't expect them to be bringing a plate of cookies over any time soon. ;-)

To add to Missi’s comment, it is possible the tenant is smoking in the bathroom using the fan thinking he’ll get around no smoking rules.

“do we need the neighbor’s permission?”

If you do, I can guarantee they wont give it to you. Were they wrong to not have permit, yes. But they tried to accommodate you several different times. And yet you still turned around and screwed them, and you didnt solve anything.