I followed a tut from this site (i think!) on making a diy carbon scrubber. Looks great and I was pretty pleased with myself putting it together. Problem is, I got a really stinky bag a few days ago and since I could smell it in my kitchen cupboard I decided to put it in my grow room to see what difference the scrubber made. Within 30mins I had to take it out again!. The fan was simply spitting out the smell and making my house smell even worse! The only thing I can think of, after searching the net, is that i did not soak/wet the carbon before putting it into the scrubber. Is this the problem? I just put it in straight in out of the packet. I have double checked the packet and it says nothing about soaking first, but I am thinking 'why would it?' its for a fish tank normally so it wouldn't have to right? But its the only thing I did not do, and having since read this should be done I am thinking this is my problem? Any help on whether this is the problem or not would be appreciated!
Do you have negative air pressure? In other words if you close your grow room up do the side walls suck in indicating that you are drawing air in and exhausting properly? I found that I need to have more than 1 diy wally world filter (the charcoal layer is thin) plus a scrubber outside the room to help with odor. Actually if I had the coin I would spend the extra $$ on a blower/filter combo. JMHO
hey hatchit_13, yeah I have negative pressure (i think). My walls are wooden so no movement on them. But I read up on having an intake hole instead of a fan which gives negative pressure. It's supposed to be a good thing isn't it? Therefore I think its safe to say I have negative pressure. So is this causing the problem? I can't imagine needing another filter as the filter I have is the whole length of my grow room! Compared to my grow room its a fair size, so I would like to think its large enough that I dont need another one? It was only a small half oz bag as well? I read somewhere that the carbon needs soaked to activate first? Is this true? Can anyone confirm this? Or does it work just as well straight out (dry) the packet? Would I be wasting my time stripping the filter back out to soak the carbon?
If you take a piece of plastic or paper and place it over the intake does it hold in place? If so this would be indicative of correct air flow. Does your fan have enough oomph to actually push through the charcoal? I had to remove most of my cotton/batting to accomplish this. I've read that you should have at least a 1" thick layer of charcoal minimum. As far as the carbon needing to be wetted to activate it, I'm not sure. I thought the purpose of wetting it was just to remove the dust so as to make it easier to work with and I did wet mine but it dried within minutes so I'm not sure how important that step really is to activation. I thought it was called activated carbon because at some point it is infused with oxygen but hell I'm as new to this as anyone and am just repeating what I've read. hope some of this helps, GL!
smokeandmirrors - I would say my filter is approx 2 thirds full of carbon? Is this too much/too little? hatchit_13 - There's def enough power to get air through. The fans pumping out plenty of air to the outside, so looks like its working ok. It's a 133 cfm running full speed 24hrs. I'm not in the house at the moment but I will check the paper test when I get home me thinks. I think the problem is def through the fan. The smelly bag was already in the same cupboard and although I could smell it when I opened the door, it wasn't a major problem. It was only when I put the weed into my grow box (to test filter) that the smell was being pumped around my house at quite a speed! So the air seems to be getting through fan at a good rate but it just is not taking any smell out of it and making the smell worse by pumping it round the rest of the house! I've only got two plants growing but want to get it sorted before they start to smell!
well, that's the point really - if you have a filter that's thimble sized then filling it even fully wont help my question was how much carbon are you using - not how full is your filter
sorry smokeandmirrors, it's hard to say as I have flung out the packaging but it is approx 18inches long and 100mm in circumference. The actual grow box is the same width and approx 40 inches deep. Is that enough info to work out if there is enough or not? The filter takes up most of the top of the box. It really is quite big for the size of grow box. Do you think this is enough?