Weird question of the day - what smells like weed?

[Daytimetellysucks]

Other than the obvious?

At work, we have this really, really strong smell of weed. We’re pretty confident it’s not weed

You can only smell it in one place - at the bottom of the stairs from the offices into the workshop. There’s our stores to one side and then just the open work shop.

We’ve torn the stores apart - nothing in there, but you can barely smell it in there anyway.

No exterior walls, just metal stairs and a concrete floor. The wall for the stores is just a stud wall with plasterboard (but it’s only been plaster-boarded on one side of the stud wall). No ventilation pipes around that area and once you’re a few metres away from the stairs you can’t smell it.

It’s driving us all nuts as we cannot find where it’s coming from - where it’s at it’s strongest, there’s just nothing there.

The offices are on a mezzanine floor, above the stores area and you can’t smell it upstairs.

When you walk in first thing in the morning it absolutely stinks and everyone can smell it

Any ideas?

Thanks!

You say "stores" and "workshop" ? What exactly is being stored, and what exactly is being worked on ?

Is it possible there's something stashed inside a delivery ?

How long has this been going on ?

Do you find the smell clings to you after you've left work ?

Also, does the smell seem to rise, fall or just linger ? Basically is it lighter or heavier than air ? That might give a hint as to whereabouts it lives on the molecular weight scale of things.

Following on from that, and a rather obvious question, but is it a smell one of your colleagues could - albeit unwittingly - be carrying into the building ?

Cloth nappies with ammonia build up... probably not relevant to your situation though 😂

@LolaNova

Cloth nappies with ammonia build up... probably not relevant to your situation though 😂

Ammonia is a very distinct un-terpeny smell. Although if there is any around (we don't know what's stored yet) it may be doing something with another reagent

Assuming the OP is posting in good faith then the fact it seems many people are smelling something suggests there is something to be smelled, rather than if it was just the OP, which might suggest another explanation.

Personally I'm intrigued by the fact it's an indoor smell. If it had been outdoors, then a drifting smell would be much more likely. I've smelled growing cannabis at 500 metres 40 feet up a ladder. But then I've also smelled tobacco smoke at over a kilometre at times.

Stores is where we keep all the parts we use - the other side of the wall where the smell is where we keep screws, nails, hinges, that sort of thing. Everything is all in open plastic storage boxes on open metal shelving. The smell is barely noticeable in the stores and we’ve dragged everything out of that area and there was nothing there

The workshop - huge, open area, the company before us was a coachworks about 15 years ago so just a big, open space with very high ceilings, shelving and benches around the walls.

What we make is quite outing but it’s nothing that smells of weed, or uses products that smell like weed - stuff does smell (certain glues, etc) but nothing like weed

You can smell it about half way down the stairs.

I’ve been in the building on my own and it smells, it smells the same, all the time.

If it was a colleague I would have thought I’d smell it on them, rather than always in one place. Everyone can smell it.

Tomato plants

Italian restaurant nearby?
I spent three sunny weeks hunting wild oregano looking for weed
(I'd gone via Holland so didn't need it but I was convinced.)

Well that's the scientist in me hooked

When did the smell first appear ?

Just for a complete safety and sanity check have any incoming gas pipes been checked if there are any ? Gas odoriser is very distinct by design and I would be surprised if anyone confused mercaptans with terpenes. But you can't be too careful.

Beyond that you might have to wait till lockdown is over and see if a local university wants to put some organic chemists to the test ....

Some types of medication (tablets and capsules) smell a lot like weed when they are out of the little foil pack.

We noticed it just before Christmas

I’ve got no way of sniffing directly above it so don’t know how high up it goes - we smell it half way down the stairs.

My boss is going to get up on the roof as he thinks there might be a seagull nest up there. We always have seagulls nesting on the roof but they usually smell fishy rather than like weed.

The only other thing, the floor paint has gone flakey at the bottom of the stairs, but there’s flakey patches everywhere, it hasn’t been painted in years and the other patches don’t smell.

Some lagers smell like weed

Depakote/Valproic acid

Damp under the floor?

Hops ? - same family as weed i think .

It's obviously the ghost of a stoner.

When I cook an aubergine on the gas hob to chargrill it, it smells like someone is smoking weed in the house. Strangely, I like it

Burning bay leaves

Actually, there are many things that smell like weed because of terpenes (cannabis plants have extremely high concentrations of terpenes) that are the compounds that give fragrant aromas to plants and flowers. Of course, I can't name the whole list, but here some suggestions: Cleome flowers, skunk cabbage, Malin + Goetz cannabis perfume oil, Axe Touch spray, beer, Moss phlox plant. I read that even some people have claimed that their body odor smells just like marijuana.

hops, we have hops growing to make beer and it's the same plant family - can really smell like skunk. We had a hoodie with a hop on it and it looks like a weed symbol, but it is actually a hop. Some strains smell more weedy than others

Some people have body odour that smells of weed, I used to work at a gym and there was one specific guy who stunk of it on the way out
Also some medication can give off the scent on your skin
Or someone working there smokes it and it’s hovering in the air from their clothes/secret stash under the carpet/vent

Do you have any mechanical plants down there or anywhere attached? On certain of our plants when the belts start to wear they make a smell like weed and it passes through the vents to elsewhere. Can really stink too.

Did you check the ceiling of the stores room? If you smell it from 1/2 way up the stairs it could be the ceiling in there or under the floorboards in the room above?

It's not peppermint tea, but sometimes that smells like weed to me.

If it’s halfway up the stairs is it level with the office floor? What’s under the floorboards: any pipes that might have plasticky insulation/ any old electrics/ dead rodent/ fungus/ mould?