One room in my condo smells like maple syrup every summer.
I've lived on the second floor of a triple decker since 2023. Every summer, without fail, one bedroom starts smelling strongly of maple syrup. Not faint — everyone I bring into the house comments on it unprompted. It fades when the weather cools and comes back when it warms up. When it's winter and the heat is on, I keep it at 65. The summers here are 80 - 95 degrees.
What I've ruled out:
- Not the neighbors' AC. The upstairs unit doesn't run a window unit above that room (antifreeze can smell like this)
- Not spreading. The adjacent rooms smell completely normal. It's that one room.
- Not a live hive. I've listened to the walls and hear no buzzing — and it doesn't smell like honey or wax anyway.
- Not a building-wide thing. None of the other units have it, and nobody remembers the previous tenant ever mentioning it. He's since passed, so I can't ask him.
The room itself: baseboard heat, old pine floors, horsehair plaster walls hidden behind vinyl fake-wood paneling, drop tile ceiling. The only thing I've come up with is old adhesive behind the paneling off-gassing harder as the room warms, but that's a guess.
Has anyone tracked down a seasonal smell like this? Mainly I want to know if there's a way to localize it short of opening a wall. What kind of service would I even call to figure it out?