Real Property Management Ventura County

Should You Allow Residents to Vape in Your Ventura Rental Property?

There are only a few things that can ruin a rental home’s interior more than cigarette smoke. For this reason, most Ventura 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, more and more people have gone to enjoying e-cigarettes instead of 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 reputation it has, vaping isn’t actually as harmless as people believe it to be. 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. If you think about it, vapor can travel wherever air can inside a home. This includes 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 produces so much trouble is that it is not water, but glycerin. It may look like water vapor but the difference is that it doesn’t simply evaporate into the air. In fact, it is rather oily. The emissions from an e-cigarette are more comparable to aerosol gas than water vapor. It holds particles that are composed of chemicals, flavoring, and preservatives. When these particles come in contact with a surface, they cling to it. As these particles gather, they create a thick film that is difficult— and expensive— to remove.

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. Removing the filmy residue that vaping leaves on surfaces like these is a waste of both time and money and it may even permanently damage some items.

For instance, you may have curtains, couches, and carpeted floors. When the particles of vapor get to these fabrics and carpets, you can’t just wash them off with water. You might end up having to get them professionally cleaned multiple times a year. Another challenge would be painted walls because of their porous nature. Each pore is an opening where vapor particles can settle in. And this problem increases with the texture of your walls. The more textured they are, the faster the sticky film builds up. 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 potential to damage the interiors of your Ventura rental home, prohibiting the use of e-cigarettes along with other forms of smoking just makes sense. At Real Property Management Ventura County, we carry out periodic property evaluations to check for indications of vaping inside your rental homes. Our professional property managers carefully monitor your properties, ensuring better lease compliance and protecting the value of your investment. If you have any questions, contact us online or call us directly at 805-387-3682.