Cooking With the Door Open

A nailgun with some six penny loaded up would solve the problem!

I have a HEPA filter that filters out pet smells, so I recommend the poster get one of these to cope with this problem.

One long-time share holder in my building, who lives on the first floor, cooks strange Asian foods with penetrating smells, which waft upward through the building. All attempts to get him to change his ways have apparently fallen on deaf ears.

The lobby window is left open a crack, which helps somewhat, while it chills the rest of us. I've installed weather stripping around the edges of my apartment door, which helps greatly.

I never really understood the heat thing, an issue all over the country in the colder states. Why not have it higher at night and in the early morning, so you don't go to bed and wake up in the morning cold? Why have it higher during the day, when many people are out?

The cooking issue could be more than a smell, since, if an exhaust fan isn't properly employed, any area exposed to the exhaust could over time become covered with a sticky, greasy film. And some people are actually allergic to plants like garlic or may actually be sickened by its odor. I happen to love both fish and garlic, but I don't want their smell hanging around long after the meal has been consumed. A spice kitchen is really the answer, but not one for which most people would have room, unfortunately.

Regarding the lack of heat, the space heater idea is good. We use one all of the time during the winter for the one room in our home that is colder than any of the others. Today's models are safer than ever, with features like thermostats, power indicator lights, auto-shutoff upon tipping over, warm rather than hot air output, oscillation, and cool-touch covers.

Knock on the door. When the nanny comes to the door, smile and say "that food you're cooking smells SO DELICIOUS, but I am on a special diet and can only eat a very restricted list, and the scents coming from your food are torturing me! Would you mind terribly if I asked you to keep the door shut so I can concentrate?"

Maybe I'm being nasty, but my visceral (so to speak) reaction to people who live in apartment buildings and object to their neighbors' cooking smells is "Wah, wah, wah. Grow the blankety-blank up."

My housekeeper used to warm up her fishy lunches in my microwave. A simple request was all it took to shut that down.

Re middle income housing, it is surprising to learn that changes in income and family composition do not have to be reported following approval and move-in. In the Federal Housing Choice Voucher program (aka Section 8), tenants are recertified each year and have an obligation to report to the program whenever household composition changes, particularly if the new family member brings income (since it may impact on the amount the tenant must pay toward his/her own rent--when there is greater household income, the value of the voucher goes down).

Curious that we would adjust the benefits of poor people when they have more money available to support their housing costs, but not middle income people. I'd check very carefully to make sure that your development does not.

One more reason why I won't move back to NYC. Own your own place subject to pretty much a lack of control. Vertical living in boxes upon boxes isn't easy.

What a scam middle-income housing seems to be. If a Hedge Fund Founder deferred his compensation for two years, living off his savings it seems they would be able to qualify for middle-income housing. And since income is never checked after you moved in, voila you can go back to being paid hundreds of millions of dollars each year. How stupid is that? Sad that NYC has rent regulations which creates a few winners but many losers in the quest for housing.

(Food smells and nanny cooking with apt door open....)

".... reach out to your neighbors directly. They might not know that their caregiver leaves the door open, or that it is dangerous and annoying. “Try to get on their side of the issue,” Ms. Steiner said. “Say to the mom or dad, ‘I don’t think this is safe and, by the way, I don’t think it’s neighborly, either."

Oh yeah...that'll go over well. 'I don't think it's neighborly by the way, either'??

Why not '...I wasn't sure if you were aware the nanny is cooking with the door open...I realize food smells from other apts are unavoidable, but the door being open is only exacerbating the issue for other tenants on the floor.. do you think you could talk to her about this?'...and then add '...and I think it would also be considered a fire hazard as well...if god forbid there were ever a fire anywhere in the building...'

The NYC heat law is asinine. First of all the only way an apartment is going to go down to 55 degrees is if the heat is off for days. So our building blasts the heat for 2 hours in the morning and then lets the temp settle down all day and night. By the time I have to get undressed for bed, it is FREEZING in the house but still above 55 F. Now if the temp stays at 41 all night... the landlord is not legally obligated to give ANY heat at all even if the temp in the apartment is 40 F. Why is there not a minimum temp allowed REGARDLESS of outside temp? I never understood this law.

One of the reasons for the absence of affordable housing in NYC despite rent stabilization, rent control, "affordable" housing set asides and the like is that a very high proportion of the housing intended for the poor and middle class is consumed by those who do not need it. So you have wealthy folks using a rent controlled apartment as a convenience location while they own homes in the suburbs. You have people who wait until after they get in to subsidized housing to have their girlfriend move in. And you have people in public housing who rent out rooms and make a profit on their low rent payments.

Government involvement always results in economic inefficiency.

The only food with a very objectionable odor is Brussel Sprouts - over 60 YAG I can still remember my mother cooking those smelly things.

I just installed a new gas range with a huge oven. This year I will start with a huge turkey with a huge platter of dressing and give it to a local charity for their "guests" dinner and will include several loaves of freshly baked yeast bread. The scent of baking bread is heavenly.

For my thanksgiving dinner, I am smoking a fresh ham in my offset smoker - a 608# beast that makes an absolutely delicious ham and brisket. Will include lots of dressing flavored with the fat from the ham. Will also include a pot of the same fat for dipping baguettes of freshly made yeast bread.

Have been providing turkeys for feeding people for many years - try it - you will like it.

A woman that lived next door to me would frequently cook food that smelled awful and then open the door to air out her apartment. She did not open her windows or use a fan. A terrible smell would come into my apartment and trigger my allergies. I contacted my management company and board and they sent her a registered letter. My advice would be to continue to follow up with your management company and board and not back down.

I live in Los Angeles in a neighborhood, and building, that has seen significant demographic change in the past 25 years. The building was 60 percent white and 40 percent black, with a smattering of other minorities. The apartment across the hall initially emitted odors of Middle Eastern cooking, which was pleasant for me. The riots in 1992 and earthquake in 1994 changed things. The building nearly emptied, and the departees were replaced by people from an Asian peninsula with cooking odors in the hallway now much changed. Distressing is smoke from the apartment below when residents smoke on the balcony. As a non-smoker, I do support smoking in the open air. I agree that cooking with the front door open poses a fire hazard, but big city living has its drawbacks.

So, get into a subsidized apartment on acceptable income and then stay forever no matter what your income is. Nice idea. What about the next truly needy person on the list. Must he or she wait until the well to-do person in residence dies? Government beauracracy can never handle such things correctly.

Re :Waiting for the Heat To Come On: - In addition to the suggestions in the article, you might also try sealing your windows. This helped tremendously in my apartment.

In a coop in which I previously resided, my neighbor's (who was also a board member) boyfriend consistently burned food while cooking and opened the door to share the smoke. This regularly filled my small apartment with smoke so I spoke to the doorman as was procedure in this building. The neighbor's response was to prop open his door AND the fire door at the other end of the hall. The smoke no longer blew into my apartment but the fire hazard continued as he never closed the fire door once the smoke was cleared. I spoke to the doorman again but the issue was ongoing when I moved out years later.

Those nannies! Cooking their strange Caribbean or Asian foods and stinking up the luxurious coops! THE HORROR! Certainly writing to the NY Times is far more effective than walking ten steps, knocking on the already-open door, and asking them shut it.

Contrary to what many believe, the heating systems of probably most buildings of any size are entirely automatic. The super does not manually turn the boiler on and off. They are controlled by a device called a "heat timer" that has an outdoor temperature sensor. When the temperature setting is reached, the boiler starts cycles of some minutes per hour depending on the temperature. These might be 9 min./hr. at 50, 30 min./hr. at 28 and continuous below 10. Why the thermostat is located outside instead of inside is not immediately obvious, but there are good reasons that would take too long to explain here. This system, however, is not perfect, and on very windy days slightly above the activation temperature, air leakage can make apartments uncomfortable. A common recommendation on the required energy audits is that boiler settings not be above the city's minimum temperatures.