Nothing ruins a rental home’s interior like cigarette smoke. For this reason, most Hartford property owners prohibit smoking inside or anywhere on the property of their rental homes. They usually have a clause in their lease documents that specifies that prohibition.
Should vaping be banned as well? In the past few years, there has been a sharp increase of people that use e-cigarettes as a substitute for smoking tobacco. Many people look at vaping as a safe and fun activity. Some of them even look at it as a means to quit smoking altogether— this is because vaping is generally considered to be less harmful to one’s health.
Despite the hype, vaping isn’t harmless at all. The e-cigarettes and other vaping devices produce clouds of vapor. The vapor would leave a filmy residue on your walls, floors, furniture, or anything it comes in contact with. Consider this: anywhere that air can reach, vapor can, too. Every open space inside the home is a place it can reach, including inside air vents and ductwork. There is a slew of problems that this could cause and it could go undetected for years.
The reason that vapor causes so much trouble is that it isn’t made from water. The vapor is actually glycerin. It may be clear like water vapor, but unlike water vapor, it doesn’t evaporate into the air. In fact, it is rather oily. The emissions from an e-cigarette are more similar to aerosol gas than water vapor. It holds particles that are composed of chemicals, flavoring, and preservatives. These particles stick to whatever it comes in contact with. As more and more particles build up, they create a thick film that is both difficult and expensive to clean up.
While film build up can be relatively easily wiped down when it’s on hard surfaces like windows and mirrors, the same can’t be said when it’s on other surfaces like carpets, painted surfaces, and ductwork. For surfaces like these, cleaning the filmy residue that vaping leaves is both costly and time-consuming and may permanently ruin some items.
For instance, the residue left by the vapor won’t dissolve in water, so fabrics and carpets may need professional cleaning multiple times a year. Painted walls are also another challenge because the paint is porous and the vapor particles could get inside every pore. Textured walls are worse. The more textured your walls are the faster the sticky film sticks to it. You would need to frequently scrub the walls to get rid of the film. However, the scrubbing itself may damage the paint.
With so much at stake— specifically the interiors of your Hartford rental home— it makes perfect sense to prohibit the use of e-cigarettes along with other forms of smoking. At Real Property Management Greater Milwaukee, we do regular property evaluations to check for indications of vaping inside your rental homes. We want to make sure that the value of your investment is protected, so we make it our business to ensure better lease compliance. We do this by having our expert property managers to monitor your properties carefully. For more information, contact us online or call us directly at 262-309-6961.
We are pledged to the letter and spirit of U.S. policy for the achievement of equal housing opportunity throughout the Nation. See Equal Housing Opportunity Statement for more information.
