When growing indoors the last thing you would want is to have musty plant smells stink up your home, unless you’re growing something that smells nice and lovely. Indoor growing can also produce even potentially toxic odors and contaminants from soil, fertilizers and the plants themselves. The best solution to that would be adding a activated carbon filters to your airflow system to control the odors and contaminants. In this guide i will show you how to set up a carbon filter in your grow tent to control and clean the air while maintaining efficient airflow.

Please note there are many ways to setup a carbon filter inside your grow tent, this is just one of many and is very easy.

First let’s start with all the stuff you will need:

Carbon filter that’s suitable for the size of your growing tent, there are various sizes but usually they come in sizes of 4, 6 and 8 inch wide. Aluminium ducting or other type of ducting to connect your filter to the fan, usually they come in combo with the carbon filter so you don’t have to search for ducting that matches the size of your carbon filter. Hanging equipment such as heavy duty rope clip hangers . Duct clips to secure an air tight seal between your fan and the fiter. A suitable extractor fan for your grow tent to keep the airflow in check. Duct tape for an extra secure seal.

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Once you have all that you’re ready to get your carbon filter setup in your groom room.

Let’s Begin!

The place for your filter is in the exhaust system. Can-Lite activated carbon filters are mounted easily to Can-Fan and Max-Fan exhaust fans for long-lasting, consistent filtering performance with minimal resistance to cause airflow loss. The filters and duct incline fans can be hung from tent supports with clip hangers or attached to a solid surface in rooms with walls and ceilings.

Your filter should be mounted on the intake side of the fan to remove contaminants before they reach the fan housing. Usually companies produce the duct incline fan in a combo with carbon filter and aluminum ducting so you wouldn’t have to worry about which fan matches what filter and etc. To prevent dust, mold or other particles from clogging the activated charcoal in the filter itself, you should be pulling air through the filter rather than blowing air into it.

Depending on the size of your grow operation even smaller rooms or tents that draw fresh air from the surrounding area into the room to carry away hot, stale air and an intake fan to bring in fresh. To achieve a perfect airflow in an enclosed grow space you will have to put the intake fan near the bottom of the room so the denser air that accumulates lower is taken in by the fan. As the warm and moist air arises to the top of the growing space it will be exhausted by the supply fan, this will ensure fresh airflow across the plants and all the contaminants will be kept outside the growing space.

Depending on your setup it may not be necessary to have the air being pulled through the carbon filter exhausted outside your growing area but have the filtered air returned immediately to the growing area. You can do by mounting the carbon filter to the intake side of the fan with a rubber coupler or ducting and placing it inside the growing area without ducting the fan’s output out of the grow. Doing that the carbon filter will continuously “clean” the air in the growing area to remove odors.

Does it matter if the carbon filter is outside or inside?

The simple answer is no, you can have the carbon filter outside the grow tent and inside you can do both. The main concern is to make sure your extractor fan pulls out the air from your grow room/tent out through your carbon filter. It usually doesn’t really matter as long as the air is going through the filter otherwise would lead to bad odor and musty plant smells coming out.

How can i reduce the noise and make it smell nicer?

Sometimes carbon filters and extractor fans can make a lot of noise to fix that you will want to mount your extractor to a wall for less vibration or alternatively you can hang your extractor inside the grow tent with the filter. Another way would be using a spongy air freshener inside the filter for a pleasant smell throughout your grow room. Or you can simply upgrade to acoustic insulated ducting to reduce the vibrations.