I hate how much waste there is with most carbon filters, and it’s damned hard to properly repack one IME. Added to the fact the become pretty much useless at higher humidity/flow rates…I have a hard time spending for them.
High pressure spray rigs w deodorizer are in the same boat, perhaps to a lesser degree. Can be effective if set up properly IMO. Gotta be careful what is sprayed and where though and that can be challenging when combating strong smells.
Ozone generators are not easy to properly implement. And can be dangerous is not done so. But potentially the most effective, and cheapest to operate by far. It takes a LOT of “mixing space” IME and that can be a real bitch to facilitate in most homes.
They are certainly effective at odor control, no doubt. Also effective at killing plants at higher concentrations.
The government says they are also effective at killing humans. Not sure there’s a good way to mitigate that risk as it relates to odor control.
I will say that circa 1998 I had an indoor air cleaner that relied heavily on ozone, and I ran it 24/7 to kill odors. It worked, and I’m not dead. Yet.
If you live by yourself, your call. I wouldn’t risk it with other humans or pets in the house.
I guess that’s where the careful implementation part comes in.
In my case, directly post ventilation in a chamber, and then about 50 ft of 12-in duct to the extraction fan, another 60 ft outside, in the prevailing down wind.
There’s no ozone in the room with the plants, don’t misunderstand me. And no one should ever do that. Ever.
Biggest issue with me is the possibility of it circling back around in my intake. Been good so far seemingly
Ah hell, if you are just treating your exhaust on its way to be vented outside, go for it. That’s a fairly common scenario. Good luck. Maybe an in-line booster fan to push things along since that’s a decently long run.
I have an ozone machine in my basement. Half of it is dirt floor. like 6 rooms down there. and 1 is a grow room in the center. old furnace room, so there’s old forced-air ducts in the walls for my fans n stuff.
Yeah. ozone can be tricky, and can wipe your plants if you screw up with it. I killed a couple last grow. gf turned it on at the wrong time, and the intake vents were running, with lights on. no good.
apparently you can use the ozone just after lights off, for like 15 mins. I’m still double checking on that. I have an air quality meter, that i should probably use more.
When I chop/dry, and do a week long clean-out of the grow room, I’ll run the ozone machine in there everyday for 20 mins.
For sure. More in-depth… I have a pair of 4x4 tents that have 6 in inline fans acting as pushers. Those have 6-in duct work from the top to a tee that feeds into an 8-in pipe. There’s a vortex vtx 800 that pushes the extracted air into a big box I built to hold the ozone generator. On the other end of that is the couple Lengths of 12" duct, with a can fan big boy fan (I forget the exact model but it’s a hoss) at the end. The 8-in and 12-in are both on variacs. The 6-in fans have their own speed control in line.
I’m probably going to go with a different tee, and 8-in duct work out of the top of the tents to aid the flow a bit. I’ve got the outside fan running at about 50% and it’s pulling a lot of air, vtx 800 is close to 100%. 6-in pushers are somewhere around 60 to 70% I would guess.
Sounds like you’ve got it covered if you can balance outflows from the 2 tents.
Only “gotcha” that I can personally think of in this scenario is a close review of the types of materials used in the construction of your exhaust - make sure nothing is along your path that will degrade over time. Ozone can be fairly destructive, you don’t want anything leaking into your living space.
Assuming your air inlet is a reasonable distance from this output, I wouldn’t sweat possible “cross contamination”.
Yeah I’m going to have to redo all of this work as it was more proof of concept and just getting it in place since I jumped the gun on popping my seeds .
I don’t know if the fan will be good long-term, but it’s been sitting in storage for over a decade collecting dust and cobwebs so, if it goes. At least it lived a good life. The rest of the stuff from the chamber down I’ll have to replace with metal ductwork. I’ve been pricing it out and it’s not cheap but going to be worthwhile. Compared to replacing a large carbon filter regularly, or odoban by the barrel… I think it will pay for itself eventually looking at it that way?
I have UV bulbs in my air scrubber, according to the documentation they operate at the wavelength that’s not supposed to produce ozone though. There are some bulbs designed to do just that.
What I’m talking about here is post ventilation. Not in the grow room. People running sealed, not an option I guess
I use my UV-Ozone bulb the same way you do, in between sterilization of the grow room. Between that and the other measures I haven’t had a pest problem in five years.
Ozone is pretty nasty stuff, nothing I’d want around on a continuous basis.
I don’t use ozone but I did stay at a Holiday inn Express haha jk…not sure ab the theory of carbon filters not working very well with humidity spikes as they seem to do the trick for me in the deep south. Of course the size of your setup and all of that comes into play. I also have a couple of small air purifiers in different parts of the house that I got from Amazon… They do a great job of removing smoke pet dander etc. and filters last 6-9 months.
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