Portable A/C & Carbon Filters

Trulife69

Trulife69

Active Member
I am wanting to build a box behind the wall of grow room to exhaust the portable A/C into. The A/C is a 10000 BTU Portable with a 4" exhaust tube thats supposed to go out a window. I was thinking I could duct the 4" line in the bottom of a home made wooden Box or a heavy Plastic 50 gallon barrel or Garbage can. And then I wanted to cut out a 4" or 6" hole to put Carbon Filter inside wooden box or garbage can and add inline fan and duct to chimney. How many cfm's for an inline fan do you think I would need to keep up with 4" exhaust duct from the 10000btu a/c. Would it hurt the ac if I had to much cfm or would it help the a/c because air would be pulled through filter of ac??
Did any of that make sense?? ha. Does this sound like a good idea??
 
just looked up the air conditioner and it says "air flow High is 342 cfms" so is that how many cfms that would be exhausted out the 4" duct?? So I would need atleast a 6" 400 cfm inline fan for carbon filter inside that box. let me know what you all think
 
that BOX will be hot(insulate very well very thick walls) but yeah it makes sense usually called an "air handler" depends on the VOLUME of the handler and the input of the other fans. so lets say you 2 6in fans around 400 cfm a dual hose portable ac around 200 cfm and carbon filter exhausting 200cfm into handler and lets say 6 ft of ducting from handler to chimney flue. your gonna need something like an 8in or 10in centrifugal fan pumping around 700-1000+ cfm but this kind of system can handle around 4-6 1000w very well.
 
it works good with insulated ducting the inherent problem with air cooling is thermal heat. also the key difference between hps and mh.... one is hotter than other in the other way MH is hotter thermally and HPS radiantly(IR).. anyways many people use this set up for larger grows.
 
also i just though about this you could use larger ducting and build the air handler in the grow area around the portable AC if its not a dual hose, then send the heat down the ducting to the chimney.
 
I was thinking that a regular window ac unit could be built into a large box with outside air piped to the coils by a fan and exhaust pipe coming out of the top to the outside or attic....

Would have to incorperate a tray to catch the condensation....
 
Also if you could use a regular window AC as I mentioned above, there would be no need for carbon as there would be no mixing of air from the room. The portable ducted AC unit would have to use some air from the room to cool the coils.
 
yeah you could build the window ac usually they have their own drip pan the holes on the bottom of the ac near the outside half are for this you could just attach hosing to these holes and run them outside the air handler to a bucket
 
as for cooling the coils of indoor air conditioner, works like any other AC if you separate the intakes there will be no crossing of air
 
I have a small old unit in my shop that I am not using at the moment and I think I will try and build it into a box for the hell of it just to see if it will work. I will have to test it first to see if it still works. I was thinking if I push cool air into it from the bottom it would not be able to pull air from the room and not overheat the fan used for cooling the coils. If I do I'll keep yous posted.
 
the ac has a single hose on it. Could I do this is a heavy duty 50 gallon plastic barrel that's sealed? The way I want to set it up is 2 hps 1000w ducted to a 6" y, and then somehow hook the a/c to that 6" Y and then duct it out chimney. The lights are ducted there now through a carbon filter and a 6" inline fan but the ac ducted to the window isn't working,just reaks. How big of a box would it need to be? Theres 4' of duct off the portable a/c, thats enough for me to get to the room with the chimney where I wanted to build the box or use that barrel. From where the box would be the carbon filter would be inside box and inline fan outside box. The distance from the box to the chimney would be 8' to 10'. I can easily duct straight to chimney and have been on roof and have great airflow coming out. With that set up what would you suggest? Is there no way a 6" 530 cfm fan on the carbon filter inside "handler" would be able to keep up with ac and push 8'-10' to chimney? But Im also in basement so it has to push it up and out. Im trying to figure out cost,but either way I just want to do it right and be set. Let me know what you think
Thanks for the replys fellas
 
a big ass 55 gal barrel(well insulated on the outside with fiberglass insulation and some 3mil black plastic or poly and hvac tape) could work with the single hose cut out the shape of the single hose ac (dont attach hose as the entire ac will be in barrel) and figure out how to duct the inside intake for the AC to the inside of the room and have edges aroung the ac sealed. then basically you could add all the port/flanges you wanted at the bottom of barrel and put a big 10in flange at the top of the barrel with fan and ducting out. mind you this would require a barrel with a lid or one of thos solid ones.. my idea for ducting the intake of the cooling side of the ac from the inside of the barrel to outside is tape and a flange.lol. or if you can take the grill off of that area and craft something custom that would work better
 
You dont think just cutting 4" hole in bottom of barrel and running a/c exhaust duct straight into it? and just suck it out the top of a 6 or 8" hole at top with a carbon filter in it? Im not sure why that wouldnt work. More than anything just not sure about how big of an inline fan I could use in the top of the barrel. I dont know if to much cfms would be hard on the ac seeing barrel to the chimney would only be 8'.the specs on my ac on airflow high is 342 cfms,not sure excatly what the a/c exhaust might be the same??? But couldnt I just match that or just get a 6" 400 cfm inline fan and carbon filter to pull air out of the air handler box (Barrel) to carry 8' feet of ducting to chimney???
 
ok i understand what your saying filter inside barrel all th ducting hooked to baarel yes this will work but not for co2
 
in my idea you wouldnt exhaust with filter thru handler, it would scrub, or there would be a second filter attached to barrel to exhaust air. in the case without co2 filter just ducted to air handler
 
I just use the co2 bags, other than that I dont have anything else. Im trying to understand what you are saying because the ac would exhaust to the barrel with no filter... just the 1 filter would be by it self on top. If I were to do that way how big of an inline fan would I want pulling through the filter on the barrel? Would it harm my ac? Heres a little diagram if it helps
 

Attachments

  • Chimney.jpg
    Chimney.jpg
    31.1 KB · Views: 22
when the AC sucks air to cool coil it will suck the air out of the room. if the AC is the only thing going to the barrel you could get away with a 6ib fan and filter around 200cfm
 
I got to thinking...If I used the barrel and put a 3" or 4" hole below where the 4" ducted ac exhaust comes in then I wouldnt have any negaitve pressure and I wouldnt be working the ac to hard with the inline fan...or when the a/c shuts off the inline would pull through the hole. And really I could harvest and hang all my shit in the chimney room..and it would scrub some of the air out of that room to. The window in that grow room has a 6" vent duct,in the winter I pulled air from outside in to cool my room without having to use an A/C. Once I run a/c to barrel would it be wise to put a 6" booster on window to get some fresh air in or how bad would it be if im sucking all the air out of room and not replacing any? the room is not air tight. Let me know
Thanks polyac
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Blue brother
Portable air con for drying tent
Replies
7
Views
544
Blue brother
Blue brother
Blue brother
Carbon filter on portable ac
2
Replies
24
Views
1K
cannapotimus
cannapotimus
F
Adding portable a/c to a tent
Replies
4
Views
322
Flowerpower123
F
BB Boomer
Drying tent
Replies
2
Views
547
BB Boomer
BB Boomer
RuggedWombat
Alternatives to duct tape for securing carbon filter
Replies
16
Views
886
Jimski
Jimski
Back
Top