Negative air pressure IS sucking out more air than you're putting in. I'd buy a pre-made carbon filter. I mean for $100 you can sleep at night instead of spending hours figuring stuff out and risking yourself. Discount Hydroponics - 4" & 6" Carbon Filters Even better might be to have your valueline sucking through one and blowing through the other (if you can generate enough cfm).
wow having two filter, one before and one after the fan. that is a great idea! I think i will try that with the new fan that is coming although its only a 4" 170 cfm so i am not sure if it will have the power for two. once i get better cash flow i will probably spring for a pre-made filter.
I wrote to the tech at Vortex. His name is Guy, nice dude. He said essentially they are both the same, pushing or pulling because the can fan has equal pressure on both sides (intake and exhaust) This is with can fans, not sure of any other. So that means it's up to you. With the filter outside the grow area, you exhaust the clean air outside, inside and you just recirculate it. I'd personally rather get it out. Fans and ducting can go inside or out-irrelevant, it's the placement of the actual filter you need to think about.
hmm. although right now i am just using my duct booster fan, my girlfriend over that past couple days has notice a great decrease in smell (starting around the time i flipped to haveing the filter on the outside) so that is something to take into account.
Did you make the carbon filter? I would suggest getting a bigger, assembled one. Also, negative presure is the way to go if you want to keep the smell inside.
yea i did make one DIY style. I'm gonna make another once this one is expired that has a dust filter (white cloth) as well as the activated carbon cloth, while i have these i will supplement with a oreck air purifier with a carbon pre-filter on the outside. Once those expire i plan to buy a pre-made to ensure quality.
i installed a legit 4" blower (blower being the keyword) and a new diy carbon filter with a dust cloth. seems to be working ok. although im sure i would have to purchase a pre-made filter for the best results.
so definatly gonna buy a pre-made....the DIY does not stop the smell 100%.....i can still smell it very strongly in the next room...will a premade carbon filter make that much of a difference?
How strong is the blower, you need lower CFMs for the scrubber to be effective. Around 200 cfm or less should be ok. Do you have it just recirculating air inside your room, or are you exhausting the air somewhere?
i have a 170 CFM blower. it has no problem pulling air through the filter though. My tent is inside my walk in closet where the air mostly just re-circulates except i do a good job of opening the door for a little while to get fresh air in there. the problem is that in the entryway, which is adjecent to my room, the smell builds up throughout "day" when the lights are on. During the night i don't have much smell issue.
You didn't really answer the questions. How is your fan and scrubber hooked up. Are they inside the tent together, just recirculating the air within the tent, or is it exhausting air outside of the tent?
Well right now i have a filter on the inside of the tent with the blower sucking air through the filter and then out the exhaust port. I also have a smaller filter set up on the exhaust port which air is being pushed through. I usually run the blower at medium/low but i have ran it at every speed and don't notice that much a difference. the smell is still there at some level regardless....which is what i need to solve. I have a picture of my old setup (booster fan/shittier diy filter) up at the start of the thread. the equipment has changed but the positioning is still the same.
I think you should get a 2nd fan and get real carbon scrubbers. They make smaller ones now that look like a diesel truck performance air filter or something. I'd recommend a setup sorta like this to just hang inside the tent and let it recirculate the air. 6 X 14 ACTIVATED CARBON ODOR SCRUBBER WITH 130 CFM FAN While another carbon scrubber is on the exhaust like you currently have setup.
whoa sweet i might do that for my mum/clone cab. I managed to borrow a can 2600 from a friend i just had to go out to buy a new pre-filter. It seems to be doing wonders!!! I already have a 4" centrifigul blower and i think getting another fan would be a waste. I am running mine on low right now and it seems to be doing fine.
Yeah, I decided carbon filter was the last thing I wanted to DIY since it was one of the most important security pieces. And I doubt those booster fans are what you want, though it sounds like it's working a bit. I would say if you changed from pulling to pushing and it got better, its very possible that you had a leak and were sucking air into the fan after the filter. Its less likely for that to be an issue when you push through the filter, plus the filter can help muffle the exhaust noise - but sometimes it requires a bigger filter to push the same cfm through vs. pulling.