Having serious odor problems! Need cheapest way to seal up room in basement!

I have a 100 year old house, and have my medical grow in my basement. Even with a can 66 filter, 424cfm inline fan, venting into the chimney it still reeks inside and outside of my house....

The room I am using is 12'x6'x6' and I am running a can 66 filter and 424cfm 6" inline fan. I have great airflow in the room, however the walls in the room are uninsulated block. I have a passive 6" intake pulling air from outside.

I am not sure if the filter is ineffective or smell is seeping out through the uninsulated basement walls into the rest of the house and outside, but if I where a betting man I would say it's due to the uninsulated and unsealed grow room....

So my question is... how can I cheaply seal the grow room? If I seal the room with 6 mil plastic sheeting and duct tape will the negative pressure in the room be enough to get rid of the odor issue? Or will it be necessary to insulate and seal the grow room to control the smell? If so what's the cheapest way to do this?

I am 6 weeks into flower and the smell is getting to the point where the neighbors are going to start noticing so I need to get this fixed today!

Thanks in advance for any advice!

we put in flower beds and other things that look and smell interesting and strong to try and get your nose confused at once to help with our smell in the summer.
That old of a house is very hard to seal it up without redoing the whole foundation.

do you have a negative pressure in there? it wouldnt need to be totally sealed if you did. youll need a heavy exhaust and no intake. only a hole in the wall. the fan needs to exhaust 24hours. have a NEW carbon filter attached.

also you can direct it to a cold bedroom or living room and it will warm that room in these cold months.

Hmmm, I just smelled the air coming from the carbon filter and while it doesn't smell nearly as strong as it does in the flowering room there is still a distinctive MJ smell to the air exhausting from the room and out the chimney...

rzza said:

do you have a negative pressure in there? it wouldnt need to be totally sealed if you did. youll need a heavy exhaust and no intake. only a hole in the wall. the fan needs to exhaust 24hours. have a NEW carbon filter attached.

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Yes, there is negative pressure, I have only a passive intake and a 424cfm inline exhaust fan in a 12'x6'x6' room that stays on 24/7

I also have the same setup as you for the chimney and last grow it smelled really bad, but then I realized my return air for my furnace was in the same proximity of my grow room and I found leaks in ducting and it was sucking the smell into my furnace throughout whole house so you might wanna check that out.

You know, I think the problem is my carbon filter... I just realized it's nearly a year old now...

So if I have negative pressure in my flower room it doesn't really matter if it is sealed tight? I shouldn't bother with making it air tight to help make it so odor can't leak out?

12x6x6=432. A 424cfm fan won't pull a very strong negative pressure on the room. Especially when using a carbon filter, thus reducing the airflow. Of course an worn out filter doesn't work too well either. Whats the humidity of your basement? High humidity keeps the filter from absorbing odors. Could be several things. Good luck with working it out.

grobofotwanky said:

12x6x6=432. A 424cfm fan won't pull a very strong negative pressure on the room. Especially when using a carbon filter, thus reducing the airflow. Of course an worn out filter doesn't work too well either. Whats the humidity of your basement? High humidity keeps the filter from absorbing odors. Could be several things. Good luck with working it out.

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The 12x6x6 flowering room is partitioned off space in a large room in the basement, one of the 12' walls is made from 6 mil plastic sheeting (just as a light barrier and to partition off the room) and the negative pressure in the room is enough to pull the plastic wall inwards nice and tight and keeps it that way, from what I've read this is a good indicator of adequate negative pressure. Is this correct?

The humidity is currently 22% as it's been unusually dry, normally hovers between 30-40%, maxes out around 50% (if its raining)

ns420 said:

So if I have negative pressure in my flower room it doesn't really matter if it is sealed tight? I shouldn't bother with making it air tight to help make it so odor can't leak out?

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this is correct. the air will be pulled in from the cracks.