Smell and "scrubbing" with a carbon filter questions

So I'm in a legal state and neighbors aren't that close but I still don't want my building stinking up the neighborhood. I've used carbon filters successfully for years when venting rooms and keep the room under negative pressure. As I get more money I'm moving towards sealing up my rooms. My question is does scrubbing the air in a room really keep the building from smelling outside?

My rooms are sealed pretty tight other than current Intake and exhaust, but I'm sure there are a few tiny cracks here and there. I had the building spray foam insulated so again it's a pretty tight seal. But I just can't imagine with how potent the smells can get that a scrubber just recirculating air back into the room would be nearly as effective.

What got me thinking of it was it got rather hot here today and I had to shut off my exhaust and run a portable ac as a temporary fix until my mini split arrives. And let's just say it was a little stinky, I have a big ass yard but still wanna be respectful to other neighbors.

I had to use 2 filters. One in the room, and at the end of my exhaust. Smell was pretty much non existent.

Dontjudgeme said:

I had to use 2 filters. One in the room, and at the end of my exhaust. Smell was pretty much non existent.

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I don't want to exhaust when the lights are on after I get my mini split as I'll be adding c02 and controlling temps with the mini split. I'm just wondering how effective stand alone filters fan combo is without exhausting.

When I run my exhaust which is a 10 Inch fan and a 10x40 can filter I have no smell issues at all but it's just too hot to vent in the summer and I'd like to use c02 as well.

I ran a closed loop system. I exhausted back into my room solely for the purpose of smell. I didn’t exactly exhaust out. I ran cO2 tanks as well. Exhausting out would just defeat the purpose of cO2. Sorry if I didn’t clarify.

If you have quality CF's and you have enough CFM to process the volume of your room 1x per minute then you shouldn't be able to smell the weed standing right next to it unless you rub your nose on the flower.

I have two 12x48 Phat filters with Vortex VTX-1200 fans in each flowering room as scrubbers, total 2248 CFM. If I shut one down I can start smelling them room in a few minutes and within 15 minutes my whole home stinks a little. If the power goes out and both fans stop then you can smell my grow at the curb within 30 minutes.

Your right , its not the most efficient way of doing things but it does work a lot better then we think. The closed setups ive ran across dont smell at all until i go inside and even then its not bad.

Awesome thanks for the reply guys I got two big filters from CAN and a couple 1050 cfm fans from phat so I think I'll try those and see if that works my mini split should be here soon so just trying to get it all figured out

thinking about getting a minisplit myself.... gotta recommendation? anything i need to know? i been running regular ac and space heat my whole life. something has me wanting a mini split now.

getogrow said:

thinking about getting a minisplit myself.... gotta recommendation? anything i need to know? i been running regular ac and space heat my whole life. something has me wanting a mini split now.

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Well if you got the money Mitsubishi is the best, I didn't have the money for that and wanted a unit I could install myself since I'm in a rush and kinda strapped for cash so I went with a Mr cool diy unit. I got a 3 ton unit but I'm trying to cool 6 de hps 1k, I'm hoping it has enough extra cooling capacity to be able to add supplemental cmh lighting. It's almost always cool here at night and that's when I run my lights so shouldn't be fighting much of a heat load as far as external heat.

3 ton?! wow ..... i may have to look into that.... we run 4k but could use more. The 12k btu just keeps it usable but not cool like i want it. We aint strapped for loot right now but i stand with all growers when i say im a cheap ass. Its gonna take me months to pull the trigger on something that big.
I been "switching" to leds for 6 months now and still dont have one. im glad i took my time though cause now i understand led much more then i did before. The mini split is almost a no brainer. specially if they have a DIY version. Thank you sir.

Well i haven't had a crop come down since March. I quit my job and moved to a more friendly state. Between buying a house and trying to build out some decent rooms I've run thru years worth of savings. But I'm finally on the down hill side of one of the hardest crops I've ever personally run. I had all kinda different issues going on that made this crop a pain in the ass. Here is the last pic I got of the room, I usually take video so this a few days old. You can see my head way back there, didn't plan to get em that tall but kept having to push back flower until plants were healthy. This run is all from seed smh, which on this scale is major pain in the ass, but my mothers had to be quarantined upon arrival here at the new spot.

Edit: it was actually February, cause I was done processing and moved my March.

Yea , thats a bit too tall for me but you gotta do what you gotta do.
looks like you have plenty of space to work with , thats a huge plus compared to those shitty tents.
Whole crop from seed?! gosh that would suck AND you have no choice , that makes it even worse! Much credit to you for your hard work sir!

quarantined moms for mites?

getogrow said:

Yea , thats a bit too tall for me but you gotta do what you gotta do.
looks like you have plenty of space to work with , thats a huge plus compared to those shitty tents.
Whole crop from seed?! gosh that would suck AND you have no choice , that makes it even worse! Much credit to you for your hard work sir!

quarantined moms for mites?

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Yes I took in a runtz clone from a friend that had russet mites. So I took clones from my mothers and killed all my veg plants I had ready to bring with me. I did quarintine the cut I took in but russets are so hard to see and had never dealt with them before this. It sucks but I got many potential new keepers so I guess that's the good part of it. We shall see after a few more weeks and a smoke test.

I grew in tents for years, well I just kept upgrading til I ran out of space at my old house and then went looking for a space to expand, talked to a few guys in Mi they gassed me up on how easy it is here to be legal and get a house. So here I am lol.

I’m running a hybrid sealed room right now and I’ve got zero smell issues. Granted I’m still vegging So it’s not potent. but I had my fan off for an hour or two the other day and the smell was pretty strong outside of the room. The big scrubber does most of the work while a little 4 inch fan slowly vents during lights out and between CO2 dumps a few times per day.

If you want a product that will 24/7 eliminate odor while also sterilizing the air AND all surfaces it touches including your plants and uses extremely low energy and is totally safe for you and your plants then look into grabbing an AirROS unit. They are worth their weight in gold. No powdery mildew or botrytis, run high humidity for VPD in flower without worries. It will kill the corona virus in 45 minutes or less if for example it's left on a surface in your room.

Used in food processing plants it's safe. Keeps levels below 40 PPB (yes, billion) while effectively keeping everything sterile and odor free. Hydrogen Peroxide, Hydrogen Trioxide. Leaves no residue after 30 minutes.

I saw your other post on it. I definitely would like to have one but it's something I'm gonna have to work up to getting. I still need another AC to get my other room going.

On another note I got the Mr cool diy mini split installed. It's a 36k unit, it keeps the room cool with my 6 de lights on 115%. I don't think it would cool much more than that but I just got it done last nite and havent had much time to play with it.

It was an fairly easy install, well sorta, I mean it took me a good 8 hours to do it. That's includes running new electric for it and all though. The best part I can see about the unit so far is that it eliminates flare fittings and the lines are pre vacumed, so I didn't have to buy a vacuum pump or flare tool. It also came with built in wifi controller, now I just need to figure out how to get wifi in my oversinsulated Tin can of a building.

As to the reason for the thread i set up a new can lite 10x40 filter with a 10 inch phat fan right inside the door to my room and so far no smell outside the building and I know the plants smell strong right now because of my ordeal last week with the portable ac. I have another fan and filter in there now the same size but it's set up for exhausting if the smell does overwhelm the one that's currently scrubbing, I'll unhook and cap my exhaust for the time being. But since I don't have c02 at the moment I have been intermittently running it to bring in fresh air.

Apalchen said:

I definitely would like to have one but it's something I'm gonna have to work up to getting.

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Well when you are ready to pull the trigger please feel free to hit me up.