DIY Natural Gas co2 Generator

Dude, things are still running smooth as shit...
Been running (unregulated) non stop, my bloom and veg rooms have exploded. I'll never have to refill a CO2 tank again.
Also, I've been running kind of experimentally unregulated, and I have to admit things are looking better than I've ever seen them. My room maxes out at 5000 ppm after a shower or my wife does the dishes, but levels out well throughout the day. I used to pump 2500 ppm, and I'm sorry but my production has increased incrementally with the double ppm's. There have been absolutely NO adverse affects.
I of course have taken all the propper safety precautions, our house is only 5 years old, so we have a bunch of O2 sensors already, but I also added them to my bloom and veg rooms, along with right outside their hallway.
If anyone has NATURAL gas, you need to do this, first of all your recycling your waste into something that will MAKE you money, that's a no brainer. It also helps filter the exhaust so your producing less carbons into the atmosphere, another no brainer. When you think green while growing green, things start to make even more sense, and dollars.
Tat2ue thanks again for sharing your work. Its motivation to get more of my shit up here for others to learn from. Now that we're legal providers we are putting together a portfolio so we can do grow journals and whatnot, I see the bennifits the internet has, and have a lot of experience I need to get out there.

Yes We Canna! said:

Dude, things are still running smooth as shit...
Been running (unregulated) non stop, my bloom and veg rooms have exploded. I'll never have to refill a CO2 tank again.
Also, I've been running kind of experimentally unregulated, and I have to admit things are looking better than I've ever seen them. My room maxes out at 5000 ppm after a shower or my wife does the dishes, but levels out well throughout the day. I used to pump 2500 ppm, and I'm sorry but my production has increased incrementally with the double ppm's. There have been absolutely NO adverse affects.
I of course have taken all the propper safety precautions, our house is only 5 years old, so we have a bunch of O2 sensors already, but I also added them to my bloom and veg rooms, along with right outside their hallway.
If anyone has NATURAL gas, you need to do this, first of all your recycling your waste into something that will MAKE you money, that's a no brainer. It also helps filter the exhaust so your producing less carbons into the atmosphere, another no brainer. When you think green while growing green, things start to make even more sense, and dollars.
Tat2ue thanks again for sharing your work. Its motivation to get more of my shit up here for others to learn from. Now that we're legal providers we are putting together a portfolio so we can do grow journals and whatnot, I see the bennifits the internet has, and have a lot of experience I need to get out there.

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So glad I could help out my brother. Glad to see it's working beyond your expextations...I know mine did. It blew me away also when I made my first harvest after I installed my co2 system. Good luck w/ your growssss

this is by far the best idea on this site
the end
i can not +rep you enuff

Glad its workin out great for you guys. I need to get mine setup somehow.

I have a natural gas centrel house heater in a closet right next to my flower room.
(PICTURE BELOW) The only problem is its never used ,,ever. But im trying to figure out a way to maybe run it at a low setting on a timer 3-4 times during the light cycle to fill the room. I could pull the duct ports so the heat doesnt heat up the house but pushes the heat into the attic. The heaters thermostat is really nice and has timers etc. Its gonna take some tweaking to get it right ..hopefully it will work. I also wonder if there was a way to use a controller somewhere in there to controll the heater and the electric duct vents???


cO2 would be the icing on the cake in my room...

DIRTHAWKER said:

Glad its workin out great for you guys. I need to get mine setup somehow.

I have a natural gas heater in a closet right next to my flower room.
(PICTURE BELOW) The only problem is its never used ,,ever. But im trying to figure out a way to maybe run it at a low setting on a timer 3-4 times during the light cycle to fill the room. I could pull the duct ports so the heat doesnt heat up the house but pushes the heat into the attic. The heaters thermostat is really nice and has timers etc. Its gonna take some tweaking to get it right ..hopefully it will work. I also wonder if there was a way to use a controller somewhere in there to controll the heater and the electric duct vents???

cO2 would be the icing on the cake in my room...

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Sweet looking setup there my friend. If you do run with the idea and hook it up, you could leave your hot water side of the kitchen or bathroom faucet dripping in a sink so that the hotwater level drops every cpl hours and kicks the thermostat on and heats up the tank several times a day.

That 5hit said:

this is by far the best idea on this site
the end
i can not +rep you enuff

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Thanks 5hit...It seems to be working out for a lot of people.

tat2ue said:

Thanks 5hit...It seems to be working out for a lot of people.

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if i could + rep you again i would

Yea its a centrel house heater. I was thinking i could set the maual thermostat located on the heater itself to a temp that will enable it to fire up everytime power is provided through my co2 controller. sounds easy enough??

DIRTHAWKER said:

Yea its a centrel house heater. I was thinking i could set the maual thermostat located on the heater itself to a temp that will enable it to fire up everytime power is provided through my co2 controller. sounds easy enough??

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I don't think that the furnace side of your central air and heat system would work...imho

Why not? Its natural gas.. it has a flue, a manual thermostat, and is supplied 120v power. In reality its a co2 generator on steroids..lol

all i would need to do is hook a controller to the heater and tap into the flue to vent into the room with a duct booster. Set my controller to say 1700, set my deadband to 200 .. Whenever the co2 in the room drops to 1500 it powers the heater and the duct booster and refills the room to 1700 then shuts power to the heater and booster.....

piece a cake.

Tat2ue, Ive been meaning to ask you, how warm is the air coming from your water heater into the room?

DIRTHAWKER said:

Glad its workin out great for you guys. I need to get mine setup somehow.

I have a natural gas centrel house heater in a closet right next to my flower room.
(PICTURE BELOW) The only problem is its never used ,,ever. But im trying to figure out a way to maybe run it at a low setting on a timer 3-4 times during the light cycle to fill the room. I could pull the duct ports so the heat doesnt heat up the house but pushes the heat into the attic. The heaters thermostat is really nice and has timers etc. Its gonna take some tweaking to get it right ..hopefully it will work. I also wonder if there was a way to use a controller somewhere in there to controll the heater and the electric duct vents???


cO2 would be the icing on the cake in my room...

Click to expand...

idk, but this should work does it has an exhoust hose

i once had a gr8 youtube video made by hydro inavatons (some company that sales gas co2 generator) in the video the guy takes the cover off of 2 of there gen. to show how they worked , but i guess thats the same reason they romoved them because it showed how they worked , anyways 1 was a new watercooled system and the other was 1 of there older most populuar sold one's. and all it was was a bunsen burner in a metal box with a propane tank hooked up to it

these thing are just gas space heaters if you can find a way to reroute the exhaust, then yeah anything with a blue flame will give you co2

*but what makes the water heater so much of a better idea is the fact that most of the heat is absourbed by the water being warmed in the tank that it is heating up - it took HI many years to figure that out now they are saling water heater as co2 generators (water cooled co2 generator) prolly after reading Tat2ue's thread

DIRTHAWKER said:

Tat2ue, Ive been meaning to ask you, how warm is the air coming from your water heater into the room?

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It stayed between 83 to 88 degrees in summer and winter was 75 to 80. It never got over 90 in the summertime but I light the flower room up at 2am to 2 pm....

DIRTHAWKER said:

Why not? Its natural gas.. it has a flue, a manual thermostat, and is supplied 120v power. In reality its a co2 generator on steroids..lol

all i would need to do is hook a controller to the heater and tap into the flue to vent into the room with a duct booster. Set my controller to say 1700, set my deadband to 200 .. Whenever the co2 in the room drops to 1500 it powers the heater and the duct booster and refills the room to 1700 then shuts power to the heater and booster.....

piece a cake.

Click to expand...

Sounds good but where is the heat your creating going to go?? In the house in the middle of summer?? Or am I missing something??

If im correct it wouldnt take but a minute or two to fill the room with heater exhausted co2. The ducting that transports the heat to each room run in the attic. I can pull those from the vents to the bedrooms etc and run them to the attic vents. Plus nobody lives in the house. I will have to get an ac unit for the room too of course and aircool the lights.

DIRTHAWKER said:

If im correct it wouldnt take but a minute or two to fill the room with heater exhausted co2. The ducting that transports the heat to each room run in the attic. I can pull those from the vents to the bedrooms etc and run them to the attic vents. Plus nobody lives in the house. I will have to get an ac unit for the room too of course and aircool the lights.

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Nobody lives there...so I was missing something...lol

I guess you could close off all your vents in all the rooms and just detach one from the duct and run that in the attic. That might work. Sounds like a plan brither.

Yea i think it will work..and like you i will never have to refill a tank again. lol

I run my lights from 7pm to 7am here so temps stay pretty good. I will have to do some testing to make sure it works and is safe. One thing that worries me is if the heater is constantly firing up it might wear out the ignitor really quick. But one thing that is good with my heater model is that if the flame doesnt light for some reason..the gas cuts off...so that pretty cool.

DIRTHAWKER said:

If im correct it wouldnt take but a minute or two to fill the room with heater exhausted co2. The ducting that transports the heat to each room run in the attic. I can pull those from the vents to the bedrooms etc and run them to the attic vents. Plus nobody lives in the house. I will have to get an ac unit for the room too of course and aircool the lights.

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i think the heater is a bad idea in the summer time (any time really)
yes it will work

BUT the heat created could only do harm, the small burst of heat into the room could dry things out, may even make conditions right for combustion IDK
but i do know a room full of plants will most likly use up all the co2 fast
meaning to maintain opt. level you will have to run the heat more often
but with the water heater you could leave that on 24 hrs almost no heat
set the hot water in the bath room to drip so that all the hot water in the tank is drained and causes the tank to turn on and off making more co2

or you can buy a gas powered stove and have it hooked up to the gas or even just cut on the stove in the kitchen and turn it on low and leave it on
if the whole house is dedecated to the grow no problem some heat will be made but if the eye is on low its cool

Thanks for the help 5hit, I will have an AC in the room but i see your point. Like i said i will be testing everything beforehand to make sure its feasible and efficient. Ive been reading the manual for the heater and it says it has a heat exchanger for the exhausted gasses, but how much heat who knows? Im going to check the temps out the roof pipe to see how hot it really is. If its hot as hell then it may not be worth all the trouble.
Co2... what a headache huh.. ive grown with it and without it and from what i can tell it really is worth it...so if this doesnt work out i guess i will have to go with LP and a gen inside the room.

Okay, this is my first post on this board, ever. I'm putting together a grow room in my basement and have a gas hot water heater available to supply CO2, so I'm checking out these threads.

Bluediemond said:

The problem comes when oxygen runs out, the flame starts to burn CO2 since there's not much left. Carbon Monoxide becomes the by-product from this point.

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That actually should say that the flame starts to produce CO, not "burn CO2". CO2 and water (H2O) are the products of a successful combustion of natural gas and oxygen. When the air supply is cut off, then there's not enough oxygen to produce CO2, so the formula changes and the combustion starts to produce a greater amount of CO. It will still produce CO2, but the less oxygen that's available, the more CO will be produced.

Bluediemond said:

What's overlooked is the fact that a bottle of CO2 is JUST as deadly as an improperly supplied gas burner. CO2 will kill you just like carbon monoxide. They both work on burning all of the oxygen in the room...and once oxygen levels get too low, they both are just as deadly.

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CO and CO2 do not "burn all of the oxygen in the room". They're products of combustion between natural gas and oxygen, they don't burn anything.

Low oxygen levels aren't really the problem. The problem is, both CO and CO2 are toxic, but for different reasons and at very different concentrations.

CO2 becomes toxic at levels of about 5% (50,000ppm), which is very difficult to achieve without actively trying to get that much CO2 into the air. You would have to leave your CO2 tank wide open in an enclosed space with absolutely no ventilation to get that kind of concentration. It's very, very unlikely that a furnace or propane burn would produce toxic levels of CO2.

CO becomes toxic at much lower levels, about 100ppm, because it binds to the hemoglobin in your blood, preventing oxygen from being transported by your red blood cells. If you muck with the flame, or the burner isn't adjusted correctly, or the air supply is choked off, then CO can be produced and even a small amount is dangerous!

-- Bud