Forest fires are going nuts. Any ideas to help me breathe in my bedroom?

Go to a pub or store open 24hours with an air fliter. You can have one good breath of clean air from the fridge. Sorry that you have to put up with the smoke. I would keep the Windows closed. The wet towels doesn’t work. Tomorrow buy an air filter..

A hospital has clean air too.

It is to late to go anywhere. I just hung up some wet blankets so that should hopefully help. I went outside a few minutes ago to grab a bucket and it is 10X’s worse outside.

And here is the fucked up part. It was the start of college football here today. The Ducks played at home. A mile away from me. I have a hard breathing in my bedroom. And the NCAA thought people playing sportsball in pads and 90º heat when the air is toxic was a good idea. But, it is big $$$. Lungs be damned.

Sorry there might be no solution other than waiting for it to clean up on its self. Can you leave the town where you leave for a week? Can you take a cold shower? The water might clean up the air a bit. Just throwing out ideas. Hope you feel better. I have smoke too where I live . Some times it gets bad from time to time. You cloud get more plants to clean the air.

At least the moon is cool

Aaaargh. Just called my mom. She lives about 15 miles away and it is even worse there. I was thinking maybe it was less bad there and I could take a taxi over there.

@johnpowell Can you visit the hospital? They have clean air. I’m running out of ideas.

I don’t think it has hit that point yet. And it isn’t like I can walk into a operating room. I would just be in a lobby with doors that keep opening and closing.

@johnpowell O.K. sorry that I couldn’t help you.

Not sure if some wind kicked in or the wet blanket brigade is working. But I am pretty comfortable now. It still hurts but I can probably sleep if I rock a hydro.

@johnpowell O.K. enjoy your sleep.

Thanks for your help. It didn’t actually help but it is nice to know someone cares. :-)

Do you have an electostatic air cleaner? I bought a nice pedestal type unit for $5 at goodwill. I cleaned the filters and washed out the cat hairs that were shorting out the wires The unit has worked perfectly for the past 3 years.
It has a charcoal prefilter a media filter and then the electrostatic plates. They get the really fine dust. I just hose off the plates when the service light turns on.

I just checked and see they have similar units at WalMart. (but they cost ~$120)

If the fire is getting close hose down the house and the area around it. Every little bit helps. .

Rent a cheap hotel for a month somewhere far away.

You could spend a week here. I have two Arby’s within a stone’s throw of my house. The air is cool and clear.
There’s a small bar a block away, and a great stop for sandwiches across the street from that.
I would expect you to do a little yardwork though.

When I lived in Reno I kept fiber masks on hand when the fires got bad there.
Sometimes I would moisten a bandana and wear it cowboy style.

During an active fire in your building, and you can’t escape, you’re supposed turn off your AC/heat, and wet towels and rags and use them to block vents, and use one over your face to prevent smoke inhalation, trying to breath through your nose, but the wet rag should cover your mouth and nose. With your situation I’m not sure if that’s the best thing to do or not. Can you call a fire department out of your area and ask for advice? I only suggest out of your area, because in area they are very busy right now. That or a TV station that is reporting on it.

If you can go somewhere where the air is better it might be a wise idea.

That’s horrible ): can’t you leave? this cannot be good for your health, it could also trigger cancer.

Something like this can get cigarette smoke out of the air and could probably get the nasties out of forest fire air.

Especially this one that has the “Truman Cell” can trap just about all airborne products of combustion.

Ugh..I feel for you, same here in the hell of the CA. foothills. Extremely hot, was 106 the last 2 days, 103 today and surrounded by fires everywhere. Horrible air quality with major air quality advisories. Set your AC on “recirculate,” stay indoors, block any drafts like cracks under doors with towels and if you have any sinus rinse around use that to flush out your sinuses, put a wet washcloth in the frizzer to frizz , helps with irritated eyes and just wait it out.

Misery to the 10th power. Are you in CA. too or somewhere else with wildfire action going on?

It’s been that way for weeks here in central B.C we are just keeping the house shut tight with the AC going strong, but it sure does suck big time.
Looking forward to winter this year maybe the snow and ice will kill these fires and get rid of this horrible smoke.

An air conditioner that filters the air and well-insulated windows will keep the smoke out of a house. If you can’t accomplish that for the house, maybe try to find air conditioned public places to spend as much of your time as you can. We cloth over leaky window/door cracks is a good idea.

If properly kept, humidifiers could ease the dry feeling in your nose and mucous membranes. If not kept properly, it could generate mold spores. You could also use an essential oil diffuser to help clear the air (like peppermint), but make sure your oils are top notch, like Young Living.

I feel for you @JP. I’m allergic to smoke, so I can imagine how uncomfortable the smoke is making you. It sounds like you’ve done pretty much what you can do. Can you get away for a few days until the fires are out and the smoke dissipates? I found that was pretty much all that helped when we had fires locally.

Man you need to get out!

Went shopping for air filters today. Shocker, everyone else had the same idea. Here is a satellite image from NASA.

I went a bit of a different route and I am not sure if this helped but it feels like it has. I have a few spare empty fishtanks that I filled with water and I got some pumps and a bunch of these.

So I am pumping a bunch of tiny air bubbles through 30 gallons of water hoping that will clean the air a bit. And it is actually better since I started. But I am also the dude that got high on newspaper spayed with Windex thinking it was LSD in high school. So fuck if I know.

Good thinking.

Aaaargh.. I needed beer and just walked to the store. I saw a few people out walking with wet bandanas covering their mouth and nose. Everything has a orange glow and after about 100 meters you can’t see anything. It is rough.

But there is good news. This is the first time I left my apartment today except to get the supplies mentioned above. It wasn’t as bad this morning.

But it is bad now. So the good news is my crazy wall of towels and fishtank pumps and bubblers in my room are working. I am fairly comfortable.

Good thinking!
Those poor firefighters must be all done in by now.

Good to hear @JP. It’s horrible your state is going through this. I hate bush fires. Stay safe and I’ll hope for clean air for you very soon.

The bubbles are a great idea. Maybe if you keep most of the bubbles in one of the smaller rooms that room will be extra easy to breath in? Like when I’m cold in the winter I put a space heater in a small bedroom, close the door, and sleep there. When I go out to the kitchen or living room it’s cold, but I’m only in the kitchen for a short time. Same with moving plants into the small room.

@JLeslie :: Yes.. I only care about my bedroom. The rest of the apartment can get smokey. I have a two bedroom place and spend 95% of the time in my room. I just went for a poo and the bathroom is pretty bad. But my room is not great but not painful.

I was a bit curious about the output of the air pumps since the boxes didn’t mention the output. So I filled up the bathtub and had them go into a five gallon garbage bag. They filled up a five gallon kitchen bag in a few minutes. Which is a lot better than I expected. If my math is right they would cycle through the volume of air in my room about every 30 minutes. Which is pretty good for 20 bucks worth of pumps. I know that isn’t 100% clean air as a output. But right now I can deal with 2% better each cycle.

^^I like your experiment. I wonder if you fill the bag with air and take a direct inhale once in a while if you get a lot of oxygen?

I also wonder if those bubbles truly are cleaner air? Isn’t it pulling the air from inside your apartment and letting it loose into the water? Is there some sort of filter on that air before it hits the water?

Also, going back to my first answer about turning off the AC, someone mentioned it’s better to run it because of the air filter. That might be right. It sounds logical. My answer was for fires inside of a structure you are in and can’t escape, which is a different situation.

Keep windows and doors closed. Run an air conditioner, but keep the fresh-air intake closed and the filter clean to prevent outdoor smoke from getting inside. Hope this helps and that things are getting better over there.

How does one fill a bag with air??

^^He let the bubbles rise up into the bag.

A balloon is a bag you fill with air.
A bag of potato chips has more air in it than chips.
Bagging air is easy.
Someone who is terribly clever can think of all sorts of ways to fill a bag with air.
What jp did was very clever, and similar to using a bicycle pump to fill a bag with air.

Anyone can swish a plastic bag through the air and create a bag of air. But how do you fill it with air on hand that isn’t contaminated?
I think JP was very clever too.

Empty bag and then I stuck the hoses from the air pump in and sealed it off.

And it has gotten much worse. My mom is currently at walmart getting two humidifiers. So helpfully that helps.

Last night I woke up to my throat burning but after a few hours the air cleared. But now it is getting bad again so I will give humidifiers a go. They are cheap and can’t make it worse.

I thought about running up to my sister’s in Portland since I thought it was better there. But I talked to her this morning and she said they were packing to get the hell out. They have ash falling there and she said it was miserable. They are going up to Seattle to escape and for a unplanned mini-vacation.

@johnpowell I feel for you, same here. last night cooled off and became cloudy and humid. I risked opening up the house for the first time in days, wasn’t smelling smoke anymore, was breezy, blowing it away, or so I thought. I then woke up with my throat burning in the middle of the night. Totally tainted my detoxed house. Ugh.

I plugged in both humidifiers in my room and about 20 minute later the power in my room goes out. It was enough to trip the breaker. I also have my A/C plugged in in my room.

So now I have one going in my room and one going in the bathroom that is on a different circuit. This works well since the bathroom was the first place to get smoke since there is a hole in the wall for the exhaust fan in the bathroom. I think that is the main point of contamination. With the door closed and the humidifier going it is like a sauna. And that seems to be helping.

This is fucking miserable.

OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFG OMFGOMFG!!!!

I was sitting in my room thinking something smelled weird. It actually smells like cat pee so I was a bit confused. But I just looked outside and it raining.. Sweet, sweet, rain….

Yay!

Oh, wonderful!

We got about a hour of rain today. There is a bit of haze but the air is good enough now. Nothing hurts.

And at least out of all this misery this person popped up randomly around town.

LOL!