Can I blow air through my scrubber?

[Guest]

I was wondering about this and it would really help me out if it works. I'd like to get my scrubber out of my cabinet to make some more head room. Currently I am pulling air in through my scrubber, through my hood and out through my fan.

Can I set it up in reverse? IE pull air in through one side of my hood, out the other side, through the duct to my fan and then blow it out of my fan through my scrubber? If this is confusing anyone I can make a diagram or two, I need some extra headroom!

 

[Guest]

yes

just look around at the different grows on this site and you'll see plenty of them use a similar method

 

[chepnut]

just make you have a pre-filter on because when you first blast a bunch of air out that filter you are going to shoot carbon dust everywhere.

 

[thescissors]

just make you have a pre-filter on because when you first blast a bunch of air out that filter you are going to shoot carbon dust everywhere.

i pre-blew my scrubber clean,,, took it out into the backyard and blew a leafblower into it, smacking the sides until the major dust came loose from it... much less messy (inside the house!) that way... hose down or blow the loose dust into the bushes outside....

 

[70s_PotHead]

Yes but not recomended. Inline fans are designed to pull air not push it, any back presure on the fan created by attempting to blow thru a filter will significantly reduce your air flow thru your grow cab or room.

70s

 

[Rush Limbong]

Supernuck, I'm planning the exact same set up as you. It works good. I did it once before but with a squirel cage fan. This time I'm using a 6' inline fan...much better.

 

[purrpullkush]

Hey 70's pothead, conventional wisdom and 99% of the info available on the internet says that there is no difference between pulling and pushing, as long as the pressure is the same. Can you give us a more technical explanation or is this just your experience?

 

[Guest]

The fan I am running is a 6" vortex, i believe it's 449 CFM. My cab is 3.5 feet X 3.5 feet by about 7 feet tall.

It's really winter here already and i have neighbours on both sides and all behind me as well, there will be no taking my scrubber outside to blow air through initially to clear the carbon dust, is there another way I can do this? possibly by taking my dust jacket off the scrubber and vacuum'ing it lightly?

Also, slightly O/T but I have been meaning to ask an intake related question. Based on my fan size (6", 449 CFM) how many and of what size should i be running for passive intakes? I don't have the money for another 6" for intake and i really can't have that much more noise in my basement as my cab is loud enough already with my fan dialed up to full. I have one intake right now, about 6" by 10" square with a standard heat vent grill over it. Is this sufficient or should I add another?

Thanks for all the help so far guys. My setup functions great right now temp and rh wise, but they way everything is built and hooked up, I lose a large amount of headroom, and as you can see in my pic below, my fan outtake blocks about 1.5-2 sqaure feet of floor space, which works out to be 15-17% of my total sq footage, I need to correct this asap as things are kind of crowded in my cab right now.


The outtake is on the left wall as you can see in this pic and really gets in the way on that side of the cab, I could easily fit and extra plant or two in there which would allow me to still grow my current number of plants but have them a little less jammed and alot happier.

I guess my #1 priority is figuring a way to do the inital blast of air through my scrubber without getting carbon dust everywhere.

 

[Maj.PotHead]

i grow in a cab also i use 1 fan to exhaust my 6inch air cooled hood then up off to the side of it is my 4 inch carbon scrubber and another fan hooked up to it

i pull air from inside cab through the filter and out
just a thought

 

[70s_PotHead]

Hey 70's pothead, conventional wisdom and 99% of the info available on the internet says that there is no difference between pulling and pushing, as long as the pressure is the same. Can you give us a more technical explanation or is this just your experience?

Well i'm not going to spend the time looking for flow charts but I have 25 years of experiance dealing with material handling, dust collection system etc. Fan have whats called a CFM@Static presure rating. Think of it this way, a fan is rated at 400cfm at 0psi static presure, Now increase the static presure by attaching the filter to the discharge to lets say 10psi, because it now has to overcome the 10psi the blower will flow less and it will get worse as the filter gets clogged. Take your hand and creat a restriction to blow thru and blow, then remove the restriction and blow again, it was much easier to blow without the restriction isnt it?? Same with a fan,
Like I said in my other post, yes you can do it but air flow will suffer

70s