Ok so I am anosmic (virtually no sense of smell) and my current method of obtaining spice is by evaporating xylene. I do this in a room in my house which I don't use while there is xylene evapping in it, I block the door with a towel to stop any serious amount of the vapours drifting to other parts of my house... BUT even when I go into the room I can't smell anything, which gives an idea of how little nasal perception I have, so I can't tell what the likelihood is of my neighbours being able to perceive it. I live in a block of flats, I'm 2 floors up, I leave the windows open in the room when I'm evapping, the room is on the back end of my house so the window doesn't lead out to a balcony or anything, it leads out to nothing. The structure of the room seems fairly solid, like it's solid concrete floor below me and solid concrete roof above me (i.e the neighbours floor) so I can't really see how the smell would get to them... but then again I am also aware that xylene is a very potent stinker, probably especially if you have several bowls of it evapping simultaneously. Does it seem likely to anyone that my neighbours would be aware of the smell?

Probably worrying about nothing here, but I often see people talking about being careful in regards to neighbours smelling solvents and I think I seen a report of someone being busted because of this... so better to ask needlessly than to not ask and regret it later.

Please stop evaporating xylene!! Your neighbours will most likely smell it!! Have a paint bucket and stain some old clothes and make them think you are painting something.

This can really end badly if they suspect and somehow denounce you!

Next time instead of evaporating xylene, salt it out instead, and convert the result into freebase. Or better yet, work with limonene instead.

Or better yet get some naphtha...easier to find than limo,and paraffinic (light) naphtha doesn't smell more than alcohol would.

oh man a towel will not block the smell..and it is very likely that someone will smell it and start to ask questions..xylene has a very strong distinct solvent smell. Odds are that other people can already smell it. Also if you cant smell it that is bad..xylene is not good for you to breath so you want to be able to smell it when working with it so you can judge how much vapors you are inhaling.

I would use limo in your situation. Even napthna can smell bad enough..limo is something that noone will ask questions about.

I would get some painting stuff asap now just in case someone does ask questions so you can say you were using paint thinner.

Thanks people. Yeah I guess either salting or d-limo is the way to go for me. I'll let the little bit that's left evap and then ditch this method. Just moved into the house recently so chances are that if anyone has smelled it they will hopefully assume decorating or something. I had been keeping my hdpe container (sealed) in my main room at one point, so that I could shake it more frequently, and noticed that my asthma started going crazy... turns out that the xylene was either evapping straight through the hdpe or the lid wasn't sealed enough, I would no doubt have noticed this long before it affected me physically if I could have smelled it.

So does limo not smell like solvent? Or is it just not as pungent and obvious as xylene?

limo smells like orange.

really really strong orange