“Charcoal Grill Smoke in Alley”

photo by Rick Sause

“Dear PoPville,

One of my favorite things about DC is the second it gets warm outside the city comes to life. While that’s mostly a good thing I’ve been dealing with an unexpected problem – a neighbor’s charcoal grill smoke.

My apartment overlooks 2 alleyways in NW DC with apartment buildings / small (3-5 unit) condo buildings on all sides. The ground floor unit of a neighboring building has a private patio and the amount of smoke that blows from their charcoal grill into our windows (we are on the third floor of an adjacent building) is CRAZY. A couple times the smoke has been so bad it actually set-off the fire alarm in our apartment. I researched the DC Regulations to see if I can complain but it’s tricky. I don’t find any regulations that specifically deal with smoke. Rather, they state that open flame cooking devices must be 10ft away from any building or combustible construction. They look to be about 10ft away from their building but they do grill right next to a large wooden fence – maybe this counts as combustible construction? This is a strange one for me – I’m all for a good grill-out but smoking-out entire apartment buildings in the process feels like too much. Thoughts?”