How Often Should You Run Carbon Filter In My Grow Room

And so yous've completed setting upwardly your grow room, and you've started cultivating some plants. You lot don't detect information technology at first, merely eventually you discover your growing area has a rather telling odor.

Carbon filter set up inside a grow tent. Whether it'southward the potent odour of your plants or a little flake of funk from humidity, chances are you'll want to proceed the aromas of your grow room to yourself. If you desire to continue your performance discreet, or you lot simply want to go on the smells from your growing area out of your house, you should consider using a carbon filter in your abound room.

What Are Carbon Filters?

Like near air filters, a carbon filter is designed to purify the air that comes into it and frazzle fresh air into the room. These metal cylinders are filled with carbon media and connect to a high output fan in order to remove odors and particles from the air in your grow room.

Carbon filters are available in a variety of sizes depending on the size of your grow room and the amount of filtration you're looking for. When set up properly, all the air from your grow room will become through the filter, and the odors in your grow room volition disappear.

How Carbon Filters Work

How a carbon filter works. It's actually quite simple: Carbon filters piece of work past trapping unwanted smells (odor particles) and dust particles in society to let fresh, olfactory property-free air to filter through the tube.

There are a multifariousness of materials carbon filters utilize, only most — including Yield Lab carbon filters — utilize charcoal. It's a porous material and useful for many things — from getting rid of certain gases in the air to existence used every bit lining for confront masks.

Agile carbon has a massive surface area with hundreds of pores. These pores can trap molecules from the air through a process known every bit adsorption . This process allows molecules like dust, dirt, and olfactory property molecules to stick to the carbon, preventing them from traveling freely back into the air.

Of course, air doesn't only float into the carbon to be filtered. You force the odorous molecules from your abound room to stick to the active carbon within your carbon filter with an frazzle fan. The fan pulls all the air in your grow room and pushes it through the filter, effectively keeping dust and odour molecules from escaping and spreading odors outside your grow room or abound tent system .

Using a Carbon Filter in Your Growing Expanse

When it'due south fourth dimension to start using a carbon filter in your growing area, at that place are some important steps y'all need to keep in listen.

Find the Right Size

All carbon filters are not made equal. Depending on the size of your growing expanse and the cubic feet per infinitesimal (CFM) value of your exhaust fans, there are unlike-sized carbon air filters that will be correct for you.

In social club to determine the CFM value, you lot volition need to follow these steps:

Measure out the height, width, and length of your abound room or grow tent .
Multiply these numbers in society to calculate the cubic footage of the space y'all'll be using.
Multiply this number past the exchange rate (the number of times you want the air to be completely exchanged each hr). To have a constant flow of fresh air, you'll desire to multiply by 60, which is once per minute.
Your CFM is this number divided past lx.

The all-time way to figure out which size carbon grow room filter you should use is to make certain that your filter'southward CFM value is either equal to or lower than the CFM value of your grow room and your exhaust fan.

For example, say you have a 5ft x 5ft x 8ft grow tent:

Multiply 5x5x8. Yous get 200, which is the cubic feet of your growing space.
Multiply the cubic anxiety (200) past the number of exchanges per 60 minutes (60), which gives y'all 12000.
Divide that number (12000) past the minutes of commutation in an hour (60) for a full of 200 CFM.
Take the 200 CFM you accept and expect for a filter that meets or exceeds that CFM.

Rule of thumb: Information technology'due south ever better to get over your CFM requirement than under. If you lot go a smaller filter than you'll demand, you'll use up the carbon quickly.

Fix Up Your Filter

Grow tent odor control using a filter setup. Once you know which size filter y'all need, you then need to make sure that you ready it up properly. In social club for you lot to make the most of your carbon air filter, you lot need to ensure that information technology is filtering all of the air that is in your grow room.

This means you need to connect it to a grow room fan and connect ducting to it, so seal it properly using duct clamps.

Place the fan and filter above or near your plants. Next, position the fan and so it pulls air from your abound room and exhausts it into the filter. This setup will make certain that all of the molecules in the air will pass through your carbon filter before any air leaves your grow room.

Maintain Your Carbon Filter

When all of the pores, or adsorption sites, in the carbon are full, your carbon filter volition no longer be able to trap new molecules. Yous can maintain your carbon filter by making sure you clean it regularly — typically once a month.

Ducting in an indoor grow room. In social club to clean your filter, you should take the filter out of your grow room, then shake out whatsoever trapped dust and debris.

Note: Reverse to popular belief, using water and soap to make clean charcoal in a filter can actually accept an adverse effect. Recollect that charcoal breaks down, and with the aid of water, yous tin speed up that erosion.

Eventually your carbon filter will get to a point where it is unable to trap every bit many molecules as information technology used to. Depending on how much work information technology's forced to do, carbon air filters should exist changed every one to one-and-a-one-half years. That said, if you start to find a strong odor even after you make clean the filter at home, chances are information technology's time for a swap.

Should You lot Apply a Carbon Filter in Your Growing Area?

The answer to that question is a resounding yes!

Carbon filters are the best option for keeping the smell from your growing expanse out of your firm and away from your neighbors. More importantly, they're the all-time fashion to make certain even the freshest air is used by your plants to abound.

Information technology's worth noting that there are other short term solutions that y'all can apply, like air purifiers or neutralizing sprays and powders. That said, these tools do not completely remove the smell from your growing operation, and they will not completely eradicate any dust particles that come from your grow room. Even worse, a lot of times, sprays and gels that attempt to scrub the air actually impairment the terpenes and flavor cells of a plant.

The best manner to guarantee that your grow room is safely aroma-gratis and keep smells from escaping your growing surface area, is to utilize a carbon filter.

Yous can start by finding the right filter for your grow room by clicking here!