Arthitiseeder
Member
It took me about 4 days in total to get a handle on odor control; on ONE plant!! - I was of course shooting for 100 percent stealth so not even a lingering after thought of scent.
For any other noobs out there, I would like to offer my personal opinion on DIY and commercial Carbon filters.
I will start from the beginning. One little plant (a nirvana short rider auto) in a 2x2x5 grow tent that has been reduced to 2x2x3. the very first morning of showing pistils , I started smelling an almost oak sell but behind it was the very subtle hint of skunk. SHIT!!! SO off to the hydro store I went to go get some ona gel pro, and a fan.
I then simply hot glued the fan into a cut out hole and smashed the stinky air against the ona gel and out through some craftily drilled side holes. Seemed to work, for about 3 hours - then I got hint of smell again but this time I was also being put out by what I find to be a pretty overburdening smell (the ona gel).
I got to thinking, hmmm if I know what ona gel does then the powers that be do too , count on that, so I realized overlaying with ona gel was really just offering up the "Second Most Common Smell" of a grow. heat score is heat score.... no thanks SO I went through 2 different diy carbon filters, first one I saw was a ridiculous little 2 cuppy deal from walmart with some pet store carbon. hay that worked if I didn't want to blow the amount of air through I am blowing, but I cant do this.
in this small space I have 300w of cfl running so no hoods or vents you see, that means I need to really jam the cfm's up a bit to keep her cool in there. presently my airflow allows the temp to sit rock solid at 80 degrees, perfect to me but if I need to reduce air flow temp sky rockets, too much headache. so I thought, hmm such a small space but I am running 85 cfm . so I upsized and used some metal window screening some duct work end caps and about 4 lbs of carbon with a carbon outer layer. WOOT WOOT kicks ass, for about 12 hours, then I can again smell the hints of skunk. WTF!!!
Time to read more,
so I did,
and I realized I may be small, but I am pushing big air so I need to accommodate for that. enter the can air 2600 - perfect filter. no special canfan I have enough axials and server class fans i didn't need this. and from here this is what i decided - heat = bad filtering and in my neck of the woods we have been seeing 90-94 degrees each day. humidity = bad filtering and we have had it up in the 80 percent range..
SO I took my diy carbon filter and used it as a prefilter on the induction end, between the carbon filtering and the solid pack carbon pellets - what do you know.... seems to suck ass for odor but for humidity it dropped my tent humidity to 40 percent ... nice.
then i have a fan on the other end in the room pulling the cool air in. Next I have the can 2600 right inside the room (to avoid over ducting a small space) with a prefilter and hot glued a 3 inch pipe into it (no flange i am cheap). i sealed up the rigid aluminum duct work and then expanded it to 4 inch on the way out the top , fitted my 85 cfm fan onto the duct and sucked the internal air out. a point to note is with the heat from cfls i would need to run approx.
25 ft of ducting to reduce the temp enough to feed the air back into the room, so instead it needs to be cleaned one time and exhausted (now you understanding the high cfm? . taped it all up including the induction seams, the exhaust seams and sealed up the ona gel so i could no longer smell it. powered everything up and holy shmoly my tent looked like it was imploding in slow motion - now that is negative pressure, great for temps and because of the negative pressure i don't care about the tent leaking (remember these tents are to conceal light not smell) as any leaks are now sucking additional fresh air in. ahh but what about the smell? gone - gone - gone seriously.
so yes i spent in total to get to here about 230 bucks, but i learned DIY solutions are for those who want to take the risk on their own workmanship (i am not one of those brave ones), and most of my stuff is jury-rigged one way or another. but at the end of the day from one noob to any noob who wants to know spend your money on commercial carbon filtering - we're already just learning to grow,
pissing around with a bunch of what ifs and maybe solutions will only further overwhelm what should be an easy solution. anyways hope ti helps someone pics are below This is the induction "prefilter"
and this is the filter in my room 
For any other noobs out there, I would like to offer my personal opinion on DIY and commercial Carbon filters.
I will start from the beginning. One little plant (a nirvana short rider auto) in a 2x2x5 grow tent that has been reduced to 2x2x3. the very first morning of showing pistils , I started smelling an almost oak sell but behind it was the very subtle hint of skunk. SHIT!!! SO off to the hydro store I went to go get some ona gel pro, and a fan.
I then simply hot glued the fan into a cut out hole and smashed the stinky air against the ona gel and out through some craftily drilled side holes. Seemed to work, for about 3 hours - then I got hint of smell again but this time I was also being put out by what I find to be a pretty overburdening smell (the ona gel).
I got to thinking, hmmm if I know what ona gel does then the powers that be do too , count on that, so I realized overlaying with ona gel was really just offering up the "Second Most Common Smell" of a grow. heat score is heat score.... no thanks SO I went through 2 different diy carbon filters, first one I saw was a ridiculous little 2 cuppy deal from walmart with some pet store carbon. hay that worked if I didn't want to blow the amount of air through I am blowing, but I cant do this.
in this small space I have 300w of cfl running so no hoods or vents you see, that means I need to really jam the cfm's up a bit to keep her cool in there. presently my airflow allows the temp to sit rock solid at 80 degrees, perfect to me but if I need to reduce air flow temp sky rockets, too much headache. so I thought, hmm such a small space but I am running 85 cfm . so I upsized and used some metal window screening some duct work end caps and about 4 lbs of carbon with a carbon outer layer. WOOT WOOT kicks ass, for about 12 hours, then I can again smell the hints of skunk. WTF!!!
Time to read more,
so I did,
and I realized I may be small, but I am pushing big air so I need to accommodate for that. enter the can air 2600 - perfect filter. no special canfan I have enough axials and server class fans i didn't need this. and from here this is what i decided - heat = bad filtering and in my neck of the woods we have been seeing 90-94 degrees each day. humidity = bad filtering and we have had it up in the 80 percent range..
SO I took my diy carbon filter and used it as a prefilter on the induction end, between the carbon filtering and the solid pack carbon pellets - what do you know.... seems to suck ass for odor but for humidity it dropped my tent humidity to 40 percent ... nice.
then i have a fan on the other end in the room pulling the cool air in. Next I have the can 2600 right inside the room (to avoid over ducting a small space) with a prefilter and hot glued a 3 inch pipe into it (no flange i am cheap). i sealed up the rigid aluminum duct work and then expanded it to 4 inch on the way out the top , fitted my 85 cfm fan onto the duct and sucked the internal air out. a point to note is with the heat from cfls i would need to run approx.
25 ft of ducting to reduce the temp enough to feed the air back into the room, so instead it needs to be cleaned one time and exhausted (now you understanding the high cfm? . taped it all up including the induction seams, the exhaust seams and sealed up the ona gel so i could no longer smell it. powered everything up and holy shmoly my tent looked like it was imploding in slow motion - now that is negative pressure, great for temps and because of the negative pressure i don't care about the tent leaking (remember these tents are to conceal light not smell) as any leaks are now sucking additional fresh air in. ahh but what about the smell? gone - gone - gone seriously.
so yes i spent in total to get to here about 230 bucks, but i learned DIY solutions are for those who want to take the risk on their own workmanship (i am not one of those brave ones), and most of my stuff is jury-rigged one way or another. but at the end of the day from one noob to any noob who wants to know spend your money on commercial carbon filtering - we're already just learning to grow,
pissing around with a bunch of what ifs and maybe solutions will only further overwhelm what should be an easy solution. anyways hope ti helps someone pics are below This is the induction "prefilter"
and this is the filter in my room 
.
