DIY CArbon Scrubber

Hello everyone, this will be my 6th time making one of three designs of carbon scrubbers I have came up with in the past 10 some odd years. This is the best one I have made do to trial & error of making it work better and better and so on. I know there are alot of designs on the mag and alot of them are very good but what make mine so speacial? it works with your pocket! Alot of the things you will need you might already have and if you don't I will tell you were you can get it from. OKay, Lets get the show on the road. This is a picture of the tools and materials you will need.





Here are the item you will need
1- 6" to 4" reducer
1- 6" end air duct cap
1- 4" air duct cap
1- Rivet gun
1- box of 1/8 inch rivets
2- 6" Clamp collars
1- bag of poly-fil
1- box hex screws
1- 9/64 inch drill bit
1- drill gun
1- pair of aviator snips
1- Yard stick ( or measuring tape)
1- pair of panty hose
1- fine point sharpie
Activated carbon per measure of your scrubber
and a 3'x3' purfurated sheet metal for radiators. Ok, first we measure the metal to your specs. The good thing is you can make it as big or as small as you like.

I am making it around 16" to 17" tall give or take a 1/2 inch. So i'm making the screen one foot (12") and 20" long to measure around the 6" cap. Mold the screen before you start to use the drill like this.....

This makes it alot easier to handle the cap and the screen. Mold the screen to the cap while overlapping it to aline the holes together. Take the fine point sharpie and make a mark in the first hole on the screen drill a hole were you marked and put a rivet in it like this..

If you find it hard to handle the rivet it, take some rivets and put them up the spine of the metal sheet first like this..

When doing this make sure that the bottom cap and the 6" to 4" reducer is on and that it make a snug fit not to tight. Your going to need to take the reducer off to fill and refill. Rivet the spine and do the same for the 4" cap but your going to have to measure the screen for height so it will fit in the reducer, witch was 16"1/2. high.

Do to the tightness of the reducer I mad ajustments to the inner screen...


Next you will need to drill a hole in the center of the 6" cap and the
4" cap, make sure it is centered...


Take the panty hose and put it on the inner screen like this...

after you finish that you should have three parts to put together...

Put the inner screen in the outer screen and take a rivet and put it in the hole and align the two caps so the rivet fits both caps...


Next put it all together, make some mesurements around the top of the scrubber so you can take the sharpie and every 5th or 6th hole make a mark in one of the holes you should have 5 or 6 holes. once finish drill the holes and put the screws in each hole like this...


Once the reducer is secured take the poly-fil lay it down and streach the scrubber across it...

the poly-fil should be thick enough that you will only need to use one layer of it. Cut and measure to fit and add the collars to the top and the bottom of the scrubber like this...


And there you go your personal Carbon scrubber for what ever size you need. It is easy to size the screen because it is preforated

so you can bend it with out cutting yourself or making a mistake. it will be best to use a yard stick while doing it. Most of the materials I got them from Home Depot, the poly-fil from Wal Mart. The activated carbon will be measured to the hight of your scrubber and your reducer. Note: when you fill the scrubber with carbon shake it until it settles and it don't shake anymore. Take a peace of poly-fil and put it around the top of the carbon replace the reducer and make sure that the screws fit into place and you will be up and running.

The surface space of the scrubber is 10" high x 20 wide x 1"thick will give you 200 inches (0.12 feet) surface space. This one should last for atleast 3 months, more or less depending on the carbon you use and your setup.The setup I have that the scrubber will be housed in is
70" high x 19" deep x 47" wide, it is 36.17 feet squared. If anyone have any questions please ask. Coming Next my Inline Scrubber

Very clean ,like shop made if not better

I like it. And will be going out to get some supplies, as it's starting to smell in here,but I like it.

Thanks overbudjet, this is what I stayed with out of all of the designs I had made.

Pearlemae, Thanks. It will help in an instant on the smell.

I really like this! I'm saving the materials list so I can make this for my next setup.
I'm also from Baltimore. How's the weather up there? I'm down in FL

A little rainy but it is starting to get warm. Everything is still the same here. I rather be were you are LOL.

awesome design! you should patent that for real.

Big_Mike37, Wait until you see the next one I make then tell me what you think.

I like how the perforated sheet metal can accept the rivets and screws. Seems far superior than just relying on hose clamps and zip ties.
And why is there a polyfill outer covering? I've seen them on the commercial ones but I still can't figure out what they're for.

wow! i like this design!! K+ to you man that's a sweet version of this design!

I've built a couple utilizing the same 4x6 reducer design but never once thought about using radiator screen. Good idea!!

GardenCaress, Usually, from an efficiency standpoint, an odor control system will have a ventilation fan sucking air through a carbon filter. The outer polyfill acts as a filter to directly filter the ambient air. It removes big particles from the incoming air so that said debris doesn't clog up the carbon inside. If you were using a push design, having a fan blowing INTO one of these filters, it would be beneficial to have the white polyfill INSIDE the carbon filter, to do the same job as stated.

- SubN

cool. makes sense. thank you.

Love it. I like that the radiator screen is much more rigid than the typical chicken wire construction. Much more securely bolted together this way.

+rep fo sho.

very cool iv never read a thread to make your own scruber so forgive me but why do you need the reducer and do you leave the inner tubeempty of charcoal?? i have a 8 in fan can i use this tek for one big enoughfor that?? thanx

nachohippie said:

very cool iv never read a thread to make your own scruber so forgive me but why do you need the reducer and do you leave the inner tubeempty of charcoal?? i have a 8 in fan can i use this tek for one big enoughfor that?? thanx

Click to expand...

To expand on this question; You just fill the space between the 2 sheets of radiator sheeting with ur carbon?, if so i guess u need pelletized carbon and not that tiny crushed up stuff? ur pic looks like the fine grain shit they sell at wal mart. i guess im kinna lost on whats keeping ur carbon from making a mess

Really nice looking unit seems easy to build and its not a big awkward bucket stickin in or out of ur grow.

Thanks fellas for the kind words, ok this is how it works. Like XsublimeX said, you put the carbon in between the sheet metal packing it as you go by tapping the scrubber on the surface of your work area. When you do not fell the carbon moving any more you put a piece of poly-fil on top of the carbon before you put the cap( reducer) back on so the carbon will be tight. The poly-fil on the out side is for the big particles so they won't fall out. Again everyone thank you for all the good karma. Next I will be posting my inline carbon scrubber. From my understanding it will be the first diy inline carbon scrubber on the ICMAG. So I'm kind of pumped to hear the reviews when I post it.

Please please post the inline scrubber. This will solve all my problems : )

Inline Carbon Scrubber(Part 2)

Inline Carbon Scrubber(Part 2)

Okay SelfHemployed, I heard you. So lets get it going with the scrubber. Before I start this design go's out to all my ICmag family that have, having or had problems with the law do to the smell of there grow. This model I made can be made to ways, I'm going to show you one way and tell you how you can modify it to suite you the other way, OK. To start of for those that did not start from the beginning of this thread this is the list with some more added materials for the job.

for this job you will not need the 6" end cap but you will need an extra 4" end cap and another 6"x4" reducer. You will also need some aluminum tape and regular duct tap..

Just like the first one you will need screen..

Other than the gold the silver works the same and it is cheaper too.
Measure your screen to your spicifics of the size you want it. Say you want it to be 20" long from tip to tip, subtract the size of the reducer(give or take 6"x2=-12" from 20" is 8") from the screen size. At the rim of the reducer measure from that to the bottom and add it to the screen size times(x2). If it is 3"x2=6+8=14. So when you add the reducers on the ends it should measure out to be 20" long. There is a easier way of doing it but I want everyone to get the concept...

After measurements take the yard stick or a level if you have on and put it on the spot you are going to bend like this..

Take the aviator snips and cut a slit on the end of the mark like this..

This let the screen seperate when bent. Hold down the level or yard stick and put your hand behind the screen and push up towards the the middle like this..



Repeat the same steps for the width of the screen to be measured around the reducer. Take one of the reducers and fit the screen around it, make your marks to be drilled and rivet it together...


While riveting up the spine put the other reducer on the end so it will be a perfect fit to put on and off...

At the other end you will drill 9 holes, every 6th hole in the screen at the top you will drill a hole to put the screws in to secure the reducer. Once finished we will work on the middle part. you will need the two 4" end caps and the screen cut to size. Take both caps and duct tap, tap the caps together like this...


One end at a time put screen on and rivet it together and it will look like this..



Now when you rivet the spin of the inner screen stop half way through because you will need to cut and measure and it will be hard to modify it...

This is where you will have to decide on what side you will have the air flow going in or out. Look at the picture above, the inner screen will not be directly in the middle it will have to be either to the left or to the right. If your using the scrubber to pull air out, the middle will be to the left and if your pushing air thru it will be to the right. Some one said, can't you just turn the scrubber around and I said yes but you will have to know what side you are using. The air will drag if you try pulling air thru the left with the middle to the the right and vice versa. Measure the size and put in so you can see how much you will need to cut off..


It might take some pulling off one line at a time.Take the aluminum tape and start from the middle of the inner screen and tape the long side first all the way up until about 5'' from the top and do the other side the same. After you finished, put everything together and make sure it fits, at the riveted end drill 4 holes and rivet the screen to the reducer like this...

After you finish that you will take the tape and rap it around the outside of the scrubber while overlapping and smoothing out any rincles in the tape...


Once you are finished it will look like this...

There are some parts about the second model I left out do to lack of pictures, but it will be explaned later in the post. Even though you see the collars in the picture I use them to hang the scrubber by putting S hooks under them and hang them from the chain. Any questions or answers I'm here to answer and listen.
Peaces everyone and

I like the radiator screens, much better than the screen models, nice build. You do nice work, but I rejected tube unit designs years ago, they use too much carbon to do the job. If you want to see an easy build [no tools], take a look at my design in the diy sticky, uses three liters of carbon, and cleans two blooms for a year at a time. Keep posting your work, we need quality builders to learn from.
H

This DIY was so nice looking, I had to build one myself. I did make some minor tweaks to your design for my build though. To mate the inner tube to the inside of the reducer, I riveted the open end of the screen to a female coupler. It seats the inner tube to the inside of the reducer perfectly, without having to taper the screen.

Also, I chose to permanently rivet the reducer cone in place. To empty and fill/refill the can, I cut an access door in the end of the 6" end cap. I then used a 6" round damper (found in the same aisle as the rest of HVAC stuff), cut off the mounting hardware to get the perfectly round disk, cut out a notch that matches the access door in the end cap, and sandwiched it between the two end caps of your design.

The damper that I modified...


The end result with a little door handle riveted on, using some of the material that I cut out...


Thanks for the inspiration!