Hello GC growers! To anyone interested. Here is how I made my own carbon scrubbers with replaceable $10 filters. Note: This thread has been updated with a Step-by-step illustrated instruction set in the DIY sub-forum. Click here to go there: Carbon Scrubber Step-by-step Believe me, these babies really work. I'm using 4 of these. I've got 8 medium sized flowering plants (including 2 super skunks), and with the vegging plants, I have over 30 plants total. I vent my grow room into the floor space between the basement and first floor and honestly, there is no discernable odor in my house. Parts list: 6†in-line duct fan - Approx $30 at Home Depot A three-wire power cord (hopefully, you can find something laying around) Twist-on wire connectors (3) (appropriately sized for the power cord and fan) 6†duct flange (2) - Approx. $4.00 each at Home Depot Coat hanger wire (from 2 coat hangers) Hardware cloth wire mesh – 20†x 24†and 7†x 7†(I used the 1/4 inch stuff) Nylon ties – two sizes. Maybe 10 small ones and a bunch of long ones. A pet odor control filter (Home Depot, Lowes and Walmart all have these for $10). I'm sorry that I didn't take pictures when I made one of these. I'm just going to have to illustrate, but it's so simple, I'm sure this will be adequate. I think between the pictures of the finished scrubber and my goofy illustration, you should be able to pretty much figure it out. Here's a picture of one of those $10 pet odor control carbon filters: Here's a picture of the final product: Here's my quickie, paintbrush illustration: Loose instructions: Form the hardware cloth tube around the two flanges, then use small zip ties to hold the tube together along the edge where it overlaps. You should end up with a 20 inch long tube that the flanges can fit into. Make a couple of long coat hanger wire lengths around 21 or 22 inches long. These will go inside of the tube, into the holes already in the flanges. You'll have to custom fit these to pull the flanges towards each other. Once you get them the right length with the two 90 degree bends, put it together and then bend the wire ends down flat. Get a plastic lid or make a piece of wood or whatever to close off one end. Then use duct tape or foil tape to seal up that end. Wrap the filter material around the wire mesh tube and use long zip ties to hold it on in 4 places as shown in the photo. I had to put together shorter ties to make them long enough. Wire up the motor to the power cord. Hopefully, you can figure this out on your own or get a little help from a wiring-savvy freind. Slide the duct fan onto the assembly and just use 2 of the sheet metal screws that come with the duct fan to hold it on - or use duct tape if that's easier for you. Pre-drill if you use the screws. If needed, use the 7" x 7" wire mesh to make a protector for the fan as shown here. You can also see one of the two sheet metal screws in this picture: Hopefully, all of that is clear enough. Note that I do not claim credit for this design. I found a similar DIY artical on the web , but had to change it up quite a bit using parts that I could actually find. I have two of these just hanging in my 12/12 room. They seem to remove like 80% of the odor in the room, and then the one that this room exhausts through takes care of the rest of the smell. The filter package say that they last 3 months, and that seems to be true. I hope this post will be useful for some of the other low-budget growers out there!
Thanks, John, and thanks for the rep! I haven't figured out what the rep thing is all about yet, but I'll look into that sometime this week, and then I can start playing along with that too. Meanwhile, I'm sure it's good, so thanks.
+rep indeed So the two inside the room are pulling air through the filters? I may well use this idea but possibly double up the filters.
Yes, I have two in my flowering room just pulling air through - although that is really the wrong direction. I read someone else's explanation for this, and it sound right to me: If you suck air into the fan unit and blow it out the filter cannister, the cannister creates some back-pressure and generally distributes the exhaust (if you will) evenly throughout the filter material. If you suck air into the filter and exhaust out the fan unit, the filter material nearest the fan is doing most of the filtering and the rest of the filter is doing little. I have not changed the air direction on my two free-hanging units because I also use them to channel air flow in the desired direction and I'm afraid if I reverse the fan direction, then it will exhaust all over the place rather than in the linear direction I want. Since I still have no odor issues, I'm OK with leaving it like this. I think the dual filter layering is probably a good mod, although it may substantially reduce the actual CFM going through the fan. Too much and the fan will run hot. BTW - The hardware cloth cover to keep peoples hands and fingers out of the fan blades was actually 6" x 8", not 7" x 7". Pretty obvious, but I thought I'd mention the correction anyway. I'd like to know if you end up making one. Maybe you can post a picture of it here.
Man this was awesome. My garage was smelling like crazy from 2 Auto White Russians and 2 Auto Hindu Kush both about 13 days til harvest. I made one of these filters yesterday and it completely took out the odor. My garage smells clean and fresh... Awesome! Thanks MX!
I've been to 4 Home Depots and they all had them. They were with the ducting parts. Here's a link: Inductor 6 In. In-Line Duct Booster Fan You can use this site to see if they have them at your HD store.
thank you so much haha yet i cannot find one in my home depot AT ALL. not even in the ducting part, they just have bathroom fans
If it helps, they come in a green and black box that the fan fits tightly in, so the box is close to a 6 inch cube. I know from experience they can be hard to spot. Does the HD site say that they're available at your HD store? At my loal HD store, they weren't with the bathroom fans. They were a couple of sections down in the same aisle hidden in with the duct parts.
Well this is the odd thing, homedepot canada says they do not carry themi looked on their website and, i even asked emplyees at HD and they had NO CLUE what i was talking about, this is bullshit if they only sell these duct fans in the states like WFT?
That does suck! Now this thread is going to lose all the Canadian subscribers! Maybe your local HD store can order one from a US warehouse for you. Beyond that, I'm out of suggestions.
Hey Loco. Somehow I missed your post here yesterday. I'm so glad someone else was actually able to make use of this. Plus your testimonial backs me up on that these really do work.
I built one of these today. I can't speak to it's odor reduction potential because A. I screwed up my filter a little bit and B. my plants haven't started producing much odor yet. But it dropped my temps by 10 degrees over my 120mm computer fan. I was able to add to more 27w CFL lights and still have temps 7 degree cooler than they were with the old fan. And it's very quiet. Thanks again for posting this!
You're more than welcome, Renaldo. I dig that this port was actually helpful for anyone! Oh, and than you for giving me props for it in your thread!
Hello OD420, thanks for the rep. In a day or two. I'll be re-doing this DIY as more of a step-by-step with photos. I now need to make another scrubber and the interest level seems to warrant it. I had to perform an early harvest for a couple of my plants and it never occurred to me until now that I need a spare one of these filters to put in the dry room. I already went out and got the components, so now I just need to find a little time. I'll try to rush it for your sake, although it really is quite simple and I'm sure you could work it out. My biggest ommision in the original thread was that I did not specify that you should seal off the air leaks on the inside with something like foil tape or a couple layers of duct tape.
Hey everybody! I redid this thread in the DIY section with a photo illustrated step-by-step. Here's the link: Carbon Scrubber Step-by-step