DL, I'm interested in hearing more about how you vented it outdoors. Would you care to indulge that information?
The room I'm using is a special room. We have a three car garage, and the 1-car portion of the garage was converted into a room. The wall that is closest to the pseudo garage door has about a 2' gap that was normally used for storage. In that small area, the wall of the house has one of those ~4"x10" rectangle cutouts that garages normally have on the outside walls. I want to use that cutout to exhaust the air from the room to the outside of the house.
I've made my carbon filter, 6" exaust fan at the top of the room, connected to a 6" hose (it's the ones people use to exhaust dryers). Then from there I have the hose hooked up to my carbon filter I made. I actually did it a bit different. Instead of using chicken wire on the outside, I opted for 8" sheet that snaps together to form a duct. Then, instead of the 8" end cap, I used another 8" to 6" reducer so I could vent it outside. Not ever doing this before, and reading quite a bit on the subject, I felt this would work just as good as the way everyone else does it. Air is still passing through the activated carbon through the inside 6" tube, through the stockings, through the carbon, and out the other side, which leads outside.
One thing I'm a tad disappointed in is the size. I think I would have been better off going with an 8" duct fan, as it would extract more air from the room. It's a fairly large room - 10' x 20' - I use it as my office/chill room and want a carbon filter for when we smoke for respect of the neighbors. The 6" just doesn't seem like it's cutting it. In fact, it feels as if there's too much restriction on the end of the exhaust, because when you put your hand over the 6" duct fan that's in the wall, you can feel air pushing through (shouldn't it be pulling all air instead of pushing some back?). If I add poly-fill to the side of the filter closest to the outside wall, it doesnt' feel like much air gets passed through.
Another issue is the smell. Since we smoke in this room, the exhaust air that comes out of the filter people have commented that it smells like cat litter. Is this normal? I picked up 17lbs of activated carbon on ebay from someone who's posting CLAIMS he's got the best around. I'd show you the link on ebay in which I got it from, but I haven't made 15 posts yet here, and the forums won't let me link it. Just search for Activated Carbon and look for one that says in the title "Tons Sold w/o 1 Product Complaint-See Specs/Feedback".
One of the questions floating around my head is, how much air SHOULD be going through? Should it slowly pass through the activated carbon, or does it really matter? How much carbon is actually needed in order for it to be effective? Is more airflow better, or more carbon better?
I included a picture of what my setup looks like. Right now I took out the Polyfill from the exit exhaust (the entrance part of the filter still has some) and placed some stocking over it. It's also just pointed into the garage for the time being, until this weekend when I connect it to flow outside. I was hoping to experiment with eliminating the smell from the garage before I start pumping it out the side of the house, towards the neighbor's house.
Sorry for the long-winded post. Let me know if anything is unclear
