furnace blowing smell up into my house...

H

hockey4848

Well-Known Member
My medical grow is in my basement. whenever the furnace comes on I can smell weed smell coming up thru the vents. I am thinking about sealing off my furnace with a "ultility room" with dry wall, lots of caulk and an exterior door. will this do the trick?
 
no, the furnace needs a fresh air supply.
it uses it in the combustion chamber, and for the hot air exchange/blower

you would need to provide a fresh air duct from a place with no smell to the room you create. it will also need to have enough CFM to provide whatever the furnace my need.
ie. a 6" slinky air duct aint gonna cut it..

im sure we have some hvac guys here that could provide more info however.
 
unohu69 said:
no, the furnace needs a fresh air supply.
it uses it in the combustion chamber, and for the hot air exchange/blower

you would need to provide a fresh air duct from a place with no smell to the room you create. it will also need to have enough CFM to provide whatever the furnace my need.
ie. a 6" slinky air duct aint gonna cut it..

im sure we have some hvac guys here that could provide more info however.
Click to expand...


i dont understand.....so where is the smell coming from? What i mean is just wall off the furnace from the rest of my basement...
 
i know my furnace blower sucks a lot of air. chances are its more powerful than the fan your using in your grow room.

if the room your growing in has a return air duct, the furnace will pull air from that room. a return air doesnt blow out. it works off the idea that your furnace shouldnt blow into a sealed room. it would essentially be pressurizing the room, therefore making it harder to get hot air in there.

like i said, i only have basic knowledge of hvac systems. enough to do what i have to.
 
hockey4848 said:
i dont understand.....so where is the smell coming from? What i mean is just wall off the furnace from the rest of my basement...
Click to expand...
Its getting into a leaky air duct somehow. Follow your cold air return. There will be a vent on one of your interior walls upstairs. Your heat vents should all be on your exterior walls. Duct tape every joint really well. Do the exact same thing with all the hot air ducts. So basically just seal every joint in every duct in your basment. Watch for vents down there also. Might be one open. Depends how the havac guy set it up. You could build a utility room and isolate it completely...and that will do absolutely nothing but piss you off.
 
unohu69 said:
no, the furnace needs a fresh air supply.
it uses it in the combustion chamber, and for the hot air exchange/blower

you would need to provide a fresh air duct from a place with no smell to the room you create. it will also need to have enough CFM to provide whatever the furnace my need.
ie. a 6" slinky air duct aint gonna cut it..

im sure we have some hvac guys here that could provide more info however.
Click to expand...

I think he has a proper furnace with intake and outlets to the upper floor.
Instead of building a room around your furnace why not seal your grow with a good carbon filter on it's outlet?
 
Meowlistenhere said:
Its getting into a leaky air duct somehow. Follow your cold air return. There will be a vent on one of your interior walls upstairs. Your heat vents should all be on your exterior walls. Duct tape every joint really well. Do the exact same thing with all the hot air ducts. So basically just seal every joint in every duct in your basment. Watch for vents down there also. Might be one open. Depends how the havac guy set it up. You could build a utility room and isolate it completely...and that will do absolutely nothing but piss you off.
Click to expand...


piss me off as in not work?
 
sealing it off wont work, if you do seal it off your gonna draw negative pressure in the room and your furnace needs fresh air... I used to do hvac. if your gonna seal it off your gonna have to add a fresh air intake. usually some three inch pvc plumbed out the side of your house with a 90 on it is what you will use. pipe size is dependent on how far your running it amd how many bends are in the pipe. the furnace should have an intake somewhere on it for this exact reason. the other thing you could do if you shell out the big money is put a hepa filter on your return it will cycle the air pryor to being re distributed throughout the house. the reason it stinks is your drawing air that stinks lol put a carbon filter in your grow area if you already do add another if that area doesnt stink then your air wont stink. or you could seal your grow completely off, just not your furnace. hope that helps
 
i would get a carbon air filter for your grow first thing, then do an inspection of your furnace looking for leaks. My furnace sits about 15 feet from my grow room, and during the last few weeks of veg my whole house would smell like fresh plants, my heating runs into my crawl space with all my return in the attic, but the front of my furnace isnt sealed at all so it sucks in air out of my garage, hence the smell...little bit of aluminium tape and presto no more fresh plant smell in my house
 
Just to contribute, if you're pipes aren't sealed well at the seams there's a product called Mastic that you can get at home depot, lowes, etc. You apply with a paint brush and fill in any opening. You can let that dry then put the tape around it. For larger openings mesh fiber glass can be applied to the seam then mastic applied. My reasoning for mastic and not the tape alone is that your hot air vents will eventually cause the tape to come off. Cold air returns are less suspectable to this but I still hit mine with the mastic.
Good Luck!
 
http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/digests/bsd-014-air-flow-control-in-buildings

Even tho this article is writtem with moisture control in mind, the same principles of fluid dynamics apply to moving air in a sealed/semi-sealed environment.

http://www.flanderscorp.com/files/FlandersFFI_literature/PrePleatAC.pdf

http://furnacefiltercare.com/residential/carbon-filter/

Here are just a couple of sites that will give you a good idea of what kind of carbon filters are available, how they work, and will give you a starting point. I put an 11 pleat carbon filter in place of my regular filter (if they are loose, you can actually stack 2 on top of each other) and I put 4 air-wick auto dispensers spraying febreeze inside the room itself. That ought to at least knock the odor down quite considerably. I found out REAL quick just how important good odor control is at the start. NOt only did my whole house smell of flowering plants, you could smell it down the driveway.
 
Bluegrassgrower said:
sealing it off wont work, if you do seal it off your gonna draw negative pressure in the room and your furnace needs fresh air... I used to do hvac. if your gonna seal it off your gonna have to add a fresh air intake. usually some three inch pvc plumbed out the side of your house with a 90 on it is what you will use. pipe size is dependent on how far your running it amd how many bends are in the pipe. the furnace should have an intake somewhere on it for this exact reason. the other thing you could do if you shell out the big money is put a hepa filter on your return it will cycle the air pryor to being re distributed throughout the house. the reason it stinks is your drawing air that stinks lol put a carbon filter in your grow area if you already do add another if that area doesnt stink then your air wont stink. or you could seal your grow completely off, just not your furnace. hope that helps
Click to expand...

i would just be putting a wall up to separate the grow from the furnace and water heater etc. the pvc is already plumbed out of the house, the furnace is only 2 years old. it is a high efficiency unit.
 
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