furnace produce co2?

[rhymesayer]

i got my grow setup in my furnace room in my basement...ive heard and read alot about how burning fossil fuels creates CO2...i was just wondering if the furnace would produce enough or too much CO2?...i have old radiator heat so the furnace heats up the oil and such therefore burning the fossil fuel...just wondering.

 

[alphacat]

Only way to know for sure is with a co2 meter...

 

[jerseydro]

no one knows an estimate on what something like a furnace might give out? thats an interesting question.

 

[holla@yoboy]

i dont imagine very much, the co2 goes out the chiminey with the rest of the exhaust

 

[GirlWonderGrows]

What is the furnace burning? You say its a radiator system, so it could be burning fuel oil. If it is, there are lots of other toxins in there and I wouldn't try to use it for co2. If its burning natural gas (aka methane) than it will probably be pretty clean. What you would have to do is pipe the exaust (what is currently going up the chimney) into your grow room.

Now, this takes some consideration. The furnace is surely burning WAY more NG than you would need to produce enough CO2. That means WAY more co2 than you want. If you've ever taken the cover off the burner area, there is probably about 20 jets of flame in there, and they are BIG. Thats way bigger than a normal size CO2 gen. There could also be carbon monoxide and other nasty shit in there. I'm suppose to say "DON"T DO IT! ITS WAY TOO RISKY!!"

If you still want to know more, I recomend you get a co2 monitor with the flush mode. This will turn on exaust fans when the CO2 gets too high (above your set point) rather than turning a generator on when it gets too low. I was in the store talking to the dude about monitors and he had no idea why anyone would ever need that function. Some people are so narrow minded.

You will also need something to turn the fans on if it gets too hot in the room, and some way of shutting gas coming into the room off. This could be a kill switch hooded in to the furnace control. If you can't figure out how to wire that then this project isn't for you. You will NEED a carbon monoxide alarm also.

Anyway, please please please don't kill yourself. Before I did anything I'd go up on the roof with a carbon monoxide alarm and see if the exaust set it off. I'd also have a cheap syringe style CO2 tester. Try and find out whats in the flow. You don't want to pipe toxins into your home or growspace.

GWG

 

[Guest]

Get the cheap syringe and co2 tube test,cost about 5 bucks a test at most hydro places.The thing is plants take time to adjust to the higher co2 and start metabolizing faster,if your co2 level is jumping around from 1500 to 700 to 1330 and so forth,its doing your plants zero good they are getting no enrichment.The general rule of thumb is you dont want more than a 300PPM fluctuation for the entire 12 hours the lights are on.This can only be done with a controller,its not going to magically happen lol.Girl wonder the guy you were talking to about co2 at the hydro store I sure hope wasnt an employee there or he's really got a ways to go understanding enrichment

 

[rhymesayer]

thank you all for the responses...after everything it just doesnt seem like a reasonable solution...was just an idea i had when reading the article...its probably not a regular enough production because it is constantly turning on and off...i was just hopin that this might be a more affordable way of makin co2 being as the furnace burns anyways...but thanks to all...time to go get my CO2 gen...

 

[GirlWonderGrows]

Yeah, ballastman, he unfortinatly was an employee. I can think of 15 good uses for that function right off the top of my head, besides growing I think most other control systems for CO2 want to limit it, rather than increase it. What can I do? The guy is nice, if a bit of cheap weasel.... but much less than other hydrostore owners. These guys are a fucking riot! They act like its their god given right to mark everything up by 200%, and if you don't like it you can take a flying leap. Makes me sick, I tell you. Sick.

And rhymesayer, I'd do a bit of investigation before I just wrote the whole idea off. I have no idea what your experence or comfort level is, so I have to do the warning, don't stick your hand in a blender thing. If you are getting a CO2 gen anyway, there are lots of ways you could interlink the two. Basicly the gen could provide backup for the furnace and fill in any gaps. There could need to be a relay that shut the gen off when the furnace comes on, so that the controler won't have both running at the same time.

In fact, if you're willing to put up with a too hot/too cold house, you could just use the co2 controler to run the furnace... there are a ton of options that I would investigate. But we still don't know if it runs off of fuel oil (diesel fuel) or nat gas.

And it could just be way less of a hastle to get a gen and run everything simply... its all up to you. The wonderful world of growing!

 

[Guest]

If you buy a co2 generator you'll have two choices in which to control it.For years I used whats called a cyclestat,its simply a dual timer that determines length and duration of burntime.Thery cost about 100 bucks.You determine how to set the cyclestat by a formula based on the cubic footage of your room.Your second choice would be to get a co2 controller.I'm using the capPPM3 with my greenair cd-6 now,what a diference man now I have true enrichment.I set the controller to 1500PPM and if it drops below 1500 the generator will kick in until 1550,then it kicks off.The actual PPms will normally clim,b to around 1750 though before dropping.Thats less than a 300PPM fluctuation for a full 12 hours,and the plants definately respond to it.The problem I found with the 100 dollar cyclestat is that say for an 850 cu ft room I'd have to burn for 8 1/2 minutes every hour to achieve 1000PPM,,every 45 minutes would give me 1500PPM and if I burned for 8 1/2 minutes every half hour I'd be at 2000PPM.Whats important to understand is it takes time for the plant to adjust to the higher PPMs and start boosting its metabolism,if the PPMs are say 1500 but then drop back down to 600 before the generator Kicks in again,you're really not doing the plants any good because they have no time to adjust to the higher PPms.You can mess with the length and duration of burn too,burn time is suggested to be between 5 and 10 minutes but know matter how you cut it,you're going to have massive fluctuations using a cyclestat with a propane generator.They wont tell you that of course but I will lol.Its so much better if you make the investment for a generator or even co2 tank and regulator to get a cap PPM3 or better controller so you can achieve true enrichment.You'll know it too man believe me!!By the way the cap is the least expensive less fanciest co2 controller you can get I'm 99% sure