Hey all, I've got 6 plants (planning to get rid of four of them when I figure out the sex), 3 weeks old, growing under CFLS. I noticed they've already started smelling, so I'm guessing it will get a lot worse when they flower. Right now I grow them in an open closet within a walk-in wardrobe type room in my small apt, but I realize I will need to close off the growing room because of the increasing smell. That is, the smell doesnt bother me, but I'm afraid it will seep out into the apartment building and make the neighbours suspicious. So I'm looking for a cheap way to conceal the smell. I've read up on DIY carbon scrubbers, but I don't understand how it works. Right now I have a PC fan as an exhaust, even though the door of the cabinet is open. I am planning to close up the cabinet with a door with a passive intake. But even if I make a DIY carbon scrubber for the exhaust (a PC fan), won't the smell seep out of the passive intake, which will just be a hole in the wall? Will i have to smell-proof the passive intake too? Can someone explain?
For a passive intake to really work, you have to have enough output to make it work. I'm sure somwhere out there there is a formula for calculating it all... blah blah. It's basically works like this though, you have a volume of air in your grow space, which can be easily calculated. What you need to figure out is how much output your one fan has from your growspace. Basically, you need to replace ALL of the air in your growspace, a few times an hour. Now, to answer your smell coming out of the input question: the simple answer is no, but ONLY if you have enough output. If you have enough ouput, the air HAS to come through from the input, this won't allow any air to escape from the input for a couple of reasons. One, it's physically impossible for air to flow through resistance (without some force making it - physics 101) this resistance would be your air flowing in passivly. To make the carbon filter work, you have to push your air through the carbon filter. The carbon filter "traps" any air impurities (smell) and lets the air exhaust out. Your only problem you have is maintaining enough exhaust to push through the carbon filter. This is to do a couple of things 1) make sure the smell is gone and 2) make sure your intake is working well enough. To make a passive input work correctly, you HAVE to have the right amount of output.
Build a ONA bucket for the smell. All you need is a 5 gal. bucket, a jar of ONA, some soil moist, and a fan that will fit on top of the bucket (available at WalMarts for around 12 bucks). Mix some ONA with water about 1/2 cup ONA to 9 cups water, pour into bucket. Add 1 cup more or less of Soil Moist and mix. Set the fan on top of the bucket so it blows up. Your whole apartment will have a 'clean' smell to it. Also works well masking cat littler box smells.
