Setting up carbon filter and vortex fan

Hi all I'm new here and I have a question.

My grow room is rather small, 3' x 2' by 5'. It's actually a cabinet, a stealth room.

I just received a carbon filter, of the can-fan variety, and a 4" vortex fan.

My problems is that I don't have room to put the filter inside the cabinet. So I can't draw the air in the cab and surrounding the plants through the prefilter, the carbon, and then out the exhaust. That is the ideal setup.

I need to pull the air out of the cab and then have the fan force it (pushing it) into the filter. I know that this does not utilize the prefilter and also it does not take advantage of pulling air as opposed to pulling it.

Can I push the air into the filter? Will this even work? There were no instructions with the ecoplus carbonaire filter i bought.

Does anyone else out there have to use this same sort of setup because of a small grow area?

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

What is the fan rated at? Since your room is bout 25 cubes, all u need to draw air out would be 6 cfm without a filter. You might have went totally overkill on this, which I hate to see happen to an innocent toker. I hope some hydro-troll didn't take u to the cleaners. Most hydro sellers are cool but some will rip you for all your worth. Do u have links on what u purchased? Is extracting the lighting heat part of this scheme? out

Well the day I ordered the stuff I was reading the forums, and read how security and odor were not really places to be stingy, considering the possible consequences, etc. I bought this stuff hoping it would offer me some more peace of mind.

I bought:

Vortex CFN-400 High Power 172 CFM 4 inch Inline Fan

Carbonaire 4 Inch Carbon Filter

• Room Size: 8ft x 8ft x 8ft
• Carbonaire filters use highly activated virgin carbon for long lasting odor absorption
• Maximum 200 CFM: Vortex 4 inch fan recommended

but not from the sellers i linked.

I wanted to do whatever I could to eliminate as much odor as possible

My current cab set up is just a 4" tube for exhaust with a 4" duct booster fan in it (supposed to be 50-80 cfm, feels like 10 on my hand though, really weak)

If I have the fan and also the carbon filter outside the cab, pushing the air into the filter it will still be effective? This sort of setup won't allow me to take advantage of the prefilter, so...

I'm gonna take this carbon filter stuff, cut and clamp it onto the intake for the exhaust, so that there is some sort of prefilter and to eliminate more odor.

I also bought this ONA gel stuff.

If all this stuff doesn't cut it, I was gonna get a CAP Jr. ozone generator too.

I'm slightly concerned that habituation to the odor may leave me unable to notice the scent. My grow isn't even flowering now but there was a subtle odor I noticed before when I would walk in the door, yet I stopped noticing it.

I don't mind spending more now instead of paying more later for "complications" and stuff.

I'll post it again:

Carbon filters work by trapping airborne particles in the pores of the activated carbon inside the carbon filter. You need to draw air through the outside of the filter (passes through the carbon) and then out through the internal exahust of the filter itself. If you can vent outside, do so, as it creates negative pressure in the room which can be used to pull in fresh air from elsewhere. You have to make sure your fan has enough power to draw correctly without too much of a static load as well. Open to debate I suppose(for some) but most would agree it's best to pull clean air out of a carbon filter, than push dirty air through it. Why? Because air that hits the fan blades that has been 'scrubbed' already has less particulants to stick to the fans blades, possibly slowing it down or throwing it off balance. If you PUSH the air through, the air is still 'dirty' and likely to contain a higher amount of particulants. Common sense, really.

Good luck!

Also I forgot, the lamp is 250 W HPS and I am expecting this fan to take care of heat. I have a 4" air intake (a lightproof hole) at the back of the cab, on the bottom, and will be drawing the air up and through the cab, exiting out the 4" at the top.

Thanks so much

Carbon filters work by trapping airborne particles in the pores of the activated carbon inside the carbon filter. You need to draw air through the outside of the filter (passes through the carbon) and then out through the internal exahust of the filter itself. If you can vent outside, do so, as it creates negative pressure in the room which can be used to pull in fresh air from elsewhere. You have to make sure your fan has enough power to draw correctly without too much of a static load as well. Open to debate I suppose(for some) but most would agree it's best to pull clean air out of a carbon filter, than push dirty air through it. Why? Because air that hits the fan blades that has been 'scrubbed' already has less particulants to stick to the fans blades, possibly slowing it down or throwing it off balance. If you PUSH the air through, the air is still 'dirty' and likely to contain a higher amount of particulants. Common sense, really.

I read that when you posted it earlier. But the reason for my post is I don't have room to put the filter in the cabinet. So I can't pull the air through the prefilter, I can't use that ideal setup.

I'm going to jerry rig my own filter on the inside to work as a prefilter, but what I am wondering...is it not worth it to push the air into the filter? Does doing that not work at all or severely hamper the fan's ability to vent the cabinet effectively?

I am asking if anyone else out there is pushing air into a carbon filter and does it work for you?

jimmygreen said:

Carbon filters work by trapping airborne particles in the pores of the activated carbon inside the carbon filter. You need to draw air through the outside of the filter (passes through the carbon) and then out through the internal exahust of the filter itself. If you can vent outside, do so, as it creates negative pressure in the room which can be used to pull in fresh air from elsewhere. You have to make sure your fan has enough power to draw correctly without too much of a static load as well. Open to debate I suppose(for some) but most would agree it's best to pull clean air out of a carbon filter, than push dirty air through it. Why? Because air that hits the fan blades that has been 'scrubbed' already has less particulants to stick to the fans blades, possibly slowing it down or throwing it off balance. If you PUSH the air through, the air is still 'dirty' and likely to contain a higher amount of particulants. Common sense, really.

I read that when you posted it earlier. But the reason for my post is I don't have room to put the filter in the cabinet. So I can't pull the air through the prefilter, I can't use that ideal setup.

I'm going to jerry rig my own filter on the inside to work as a prefilter, but what I am wondering...is it not worth it to push the air into the filter? Does doing that not work at all or severely hamper the fan's ability to vent the cabinet effectively?

I am asking if anyone else out there is pushing air into a carbon filter and does it work for you?

Click to expand...

Since you need to take care of heat as well as odor, you need an OVERSIZE exhaust on top of the cabinet. Think pipe big enough for the carbon filter to sit inside of with 1-2 inches clearance all the way around. Basically it's like a big round smokestack sitting on top of your cabinet, with the carbon filter (prefilter and all) sitiing inside of it. You then mount your fan with a reducer pipe to the giant can or smokestack. Dirty hot air exits the top of the cabinet and is drawn into this big chamber (the smokestack pipe) and is prescrubbed by the prefilter, passes through the inner layer of carbon and then finally whisked away by the fan. Based on the limited amount of room you have, this sounds like the best possible solution to me. I'm sure others might have some ideas as well. I had to vent and scrub both my flower and veg rooms with one carbon filter and designed something simliar we called the 'carbon coffin'...it was huge and worked like a champ. Had LEO's within 4-5 ft of my exhaust and they din't smell jack!

I mounted the 'carbon coffin' between my flower and veg rooms and it pulled from both directions down into the scrubber area. Also muffled the fan sound really well!
Have more on this in my sort-of-journal in progress even though is work from quite a few years ago.

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/275927-first-grow-macguyver4-2-0-a.html#post3435824

bump, in case you didn't see it already

Hey MacGuyver thanks a lot for the advice. I'm gonna try pushing the air through the filter first. If that doesn't cut it, I may give that smokestack design a try. I also like that "carbon coffin" of yours, very clever. Maybe you could write up a patent even.

Anyway I found this page that says:

You can set up CAN-FAN / CAN-FILTER combos in several different ways. You can push or pull air through the filter, but the outer poly wrap is intended as a pre-filter to remove dust before it gets to the carbon, so it's better to draw air up through the filter. The carbon inside will last longer with a clean pre-filter. The pre-filters are pretty cheap to replace, but you can hand wash them too as needed.

Pushing won't be as effective as pulling but with my v. small GR maybe it'll be sufficient. Thanks again.

if you just have a small cab, then mount the filter outside of the cab and pull the air out of it. you have passive intakes on the bottom. it will clean and cool. great stuff mcgiver!!!