So ive had a dew of those vivosuns off amazon the 6 inch ones. And im smelling too much sweet cheba from my drying room which is a bedroom in a back yard man cave. I got air going through my vege room into a filter and pushed out by 2 6 in inline fans 1 by the drying room and 1 inside the vege room for out going air which passes through a charcoal filter on each spot where my air exits.
How often do you replace charcoal filters
- Thread starter corinth
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Any where from 4 months to over a year. Depends on the quality of the filter, and the amount of stink being sent through it.
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With a lot of carbon filters, you can drill out the rivets on the end caps, flip the body of the filter around backwards, reinstall the caps with sheet metal screws, and get some more life out of them. Some even come with screws instead of rivets, making things easier.
This is not guaranteed to work, but you'll notice immediately whether it does. Also, you might try turning the fan speed down just a bit to see if you were actually "overcoming the filter's capacity." Some of those cheaper carbon filters might be... overrated.
This is not guaranteed to work, but you'll notice immediately whether it does. Also, you might try turning the fan speed down just a bit to see if you were actually "overcoming the filter's capacity." Some of those cheaper carbon filters might be... overrated.
NOOOBIENOT
Well-Known Member
i have done just what tortured has spoke about and it does work on the vivoson filters , drilling out the rivets
wasn't to hard but the charcoal is in a cloth bag inside the canister and it was a real p.i.t.a to swap out , so i said screw it but that only gave me about 2 extra months of life time , just buy new ones when they stop doing what they are meant to do , just be sure your plants aren't creating more loveliness than the filters are rated for , i get a year out of my 6 inch and 10 inch filters , its the dust that gathers on the charcoal that kills them i think , tried washing one in hot water well that really screwed the filter too lol
wasn't to hard but the charcoal is in a cloth bag inside the canister and it was a real p.i.t.a to swap out , so i said screw it but that only gave me about 2 extra months of life time , just buy new ones when they stop doing what they are meant to do , just be sure your plants aren't creating more loveliness than the filters are rated for , i get a year out of my 6 inch and 10 inch filters , its the dust that gathers on the charcoal that kills them i think , tried washing one in hot water well that really screwed the filter too lol
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Ya i didnt think about flipping em over. Thats an idea . I was thinking maybe also do they sell that australian charcial in a bag where i can rip that charcoal filter open and pour some new activated charcoal in. Those 6 in charcoal filters arent too big. But then again ya i always turn my intake and out going air to full . Havent had any mold issues. Judt a bit of smell. I do have some weed drying out in my man cave so im surr im getting quite a bitnof smell from that but even that goes through another 6 in vivosun. Think i got 3 goin would be nice to be able to recycle em for re use. Figure if i do have to toss em out ill grab the old charcoal and turn it into a water purifier somehow for a water collector lol.
Or plow it into your vegetable garden. It's supposed to be helpful, although the reason why escapes me at the moment.
Yes, there are sellers of the material. I can't make any recommendations at all in regards to specific businesses, though. Only that, if you do replace your current material, to remember that these things are machine-tamped while being filled (and possibly vibrated during the process, too). So don't just pour it in - or even pour it in, tamp it, and top it off. You'll want to add a little, tamp, add a little, tamp, and repeat until full. Otherwise, you'll get out more than you can fit back in (think of digging a hole and refilling it, lol - there always seems to be dirt left over unless you happen to have a motorized tamper with you when you do it. It's the surface area of the material that does the job, not the air spaces between the pieces.
This is all just common sense, so you probably know it. I'm just rambling. By the way, there are businesses that specialize in "renewing" their customers' carbon material. Obviously, you're not going to be able to get one of them to send a class D truck around to pick up a little sack of the stuff (or be able to afford their services, probably) - but the process is kind of interesting. Well... To a relative handful of people, I suppose
. Calgon Carbon is one of them. They heat it up to over 1,700°F in an oxygen-free environment, then (IIRC) use steam as a selective oxidizing agent, or something like that. I watched a video about it, once, and realized, "Oh - so that's why everyone doesn't just chuck the stuff into their kitchen oven for an hour when it starts losing efficiency."
Yes, there are sellers of the material. I can't make any recommendations at all in regards to specific businesses, though. Only that, if you do replace your current material, to remember that these things are machine-tamped while being filled (and possibly vibrated during the process, too). So don't just pour it in - or even pour it in, tamp it, and top it off. You'll want to add a little, tamp, add a little, tamp, and repeat until full. Otherwise, you'll get out more than you can fit back in (think of digging a hole and refilling it, lol - there always seems to be dirt left over unless you happen to have a motorized tamper with you when you do it. It's the surface area of the material that does the job, not the air spaces between the pieces.
This is all just common sense, so you probably know it. I'm just rambling. By the way, there are businesses that specialize in "renewing" their customers' carbon material. Obviously, you're not going to be able to get one of them to send a class D truck around to pick up a little sack of the stuff (or be able to afford their services, probably) - but the process is kind of interesting. Well... To a relative handful of people, I suppose
. Calgon Carbon is one of them. They heat it up to over 1,700°F in an oxygen-free environment, then (IIRC) use steam as a selective oxidizing agent, or something like that. I watched a video about it, once, and realized, "Oh - so that's why everyone doesn't just chuck the stuff into their kitchen oven for an hour when it starts losing efficiency."- Thread starter
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THANK YOU MY BROTHER. Thanks for taking the time to post that it gives me so much more insight even if its ideas i could use those ideas. Ill prolly try to replace the active charcoal with new stuff. 50 bucks is 50 bucks if i can get a 5 gallon bucket of that stuff ill just find a way to reset ut up. Its not a huge priority but definately worth checking into. I almost actually wanna buy some bigger ones but even then ill still have this problem eventually. Its not bad its all legal here cept i just dont wanna broadcast it. Also considerate to my neighbors. But u got my mind going about heating it up yourself lol ... ima look into that too but sounds like theres a buttload of other science that goes into reactivating charcoal. I do want a water filter though. I plan on setting up 3 60 gallon jugs on a tree on my back yard hill . To gravity feed a future 15 by 60 outdoor greenhouse. But then again u rob the water of some important nutrients etc. Also i got this huge compost ima till up soon . Try to make some tea out of decomposed grass clippings and a bout 16 mmonths worth of corpsed flowered ladies piling up in my compost. Alot of good promix in their. Sorry my a.d.d. kickin lol thx again bro.
You might derive some small benefit from trying your oven. Keyword being "small," but if you ever find yourself behind the eight-ball, I don't guess you'd have much to lose.
If you could somehow stick it into a container, attach a vacuum pump to the container for 12+ hours like real mechanics used to do when servicing automotive air conditioning systems, then - while it's still under a vacuum - heat the container up to near "torch" temperatures, that might actually work. Oh, and you might need to do a few cycles of pulling a vacuum, then pumping in nitrogen (or better yet, one of the noble gasses), pulling a vaccum, in order to get all of the oxygen out. You wouldn't want to return to your experiment to find a container with nothing in it but ash, lol.
If you can make friends with the owner of a pet store, you might be able to talk them into ordering a bulk quantity of virgin charcoal, getting it on their regular truck delivery (to avoid shipping charges), and then selling it to you at cost. An owner of an old-fashioned hardware store used to do that for me before she got old, tired, and disgusted with the customers spending $1,500 at Lowes Depot and then stopping in on their way home to get a 59-cent fitting - and bellyaching like they were being slowly stepped on by an elephant if she happened to be out of said fitting and told them they'd have to wait an hour or two but she'd be happy to call the nearest supplier and have them make a special trip. Me... I'd have probably "gone postal," lol, but she just closed the business.
Er... I meant to type "if you have a real, old-fashioned, oiled wood floor, meet you at the door and ask how they can help you (while actually meaning it) hardware store in your community, you might see if they would do the same thing."
If you could somehow stick it into a container, attach a vacuum pump to the container for 12+ hours like real mechanics used to do when servicing automotive air conditioning systems, then - while it's still under a vacuum - heat the container up to near "torch" temperatures, that might actually work. Oh, and you might need to do a few cycles of pulling a vacuum, then pumping in nitrogen (or better yet, one of the noble gasses), pulling a vaccum, in order to get all of the oxygen out. You wouldn't want to return to your experiment to find a container with nothing in it but ash, lol.
If you can make friends with the owner of a pet store, you might be able to talk them into ordering a bulk quantity of virgin charcoal, getting it on their regular truck delivery (to avoid shipping charges), and then selling it to you at cost. An owner of an old-fashioned hardware store used to do that for me before she got old, tired, and disgusted with the customers spending $1,500 at Lowes Depot and then stopping in on their way home to get a 59-cent fitting - and bellyaching like they were being slowly stepped on by an elephant if she happened to be out of said fitting and told them they'd have to wait an hour or two but she'd be happy to call the nearest supplier and have them make a special trip. Me... I'd have probably "gone postal," lol, but she just closed the business.
Er... I meant to type "if you have a real, old-fashioned, oiled wood floor, meet you at the door and ask how they can help you (while actually meaning it) hardware store in your community, you might see if they would do the same thing."
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I just treat the filters as disposable and toss them in the trash when they're spent. The new inline filter I ordered (which still hasn't shipped yet) uses replaceable cartridges.
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Replaceable carts thats it right there. Sitting here reading up on clones. I got a buncha clones in my auto cloner they got decent roots but wondering if i let em get all big and rooty will it help alot with the overall health of the new plant. I always seem to have no probs even if its a small root system but why not just give it a few more days in guessin
BigDannel
Well-Known Member
Which filter is it? Never seen one with replaceable cartridges, that sounds interesting.
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Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
I clean and reactivate my charcoal after a year of use. This will easily give me another year of smell free growing. I have been using the same two can filters for the last 9 years and have only had to replace less than 5% of the charcoal with each cleaning.
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Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
easy isn't quite the right word... difficult comes close. Tedious describes the reactivation... but it saves a LOT of money.
here is the process:
Put the charcoal into a 5 or 10 gallon bucket. Prepare for the gas and heat and apply water from your garden hose. Stir and keep adding water until the thick yellow smoke and heat subside and the buckets go inert... it will take a while... and it is incredibly nasty.
Heat your gas grill to 500° and in batches run the wet clean charcoal through there for 15-20 minutes, till the edges of the charcoal just starts to char.
These two processes will vaporize about 5% of the original charcoal. Buy some activated charcoal pellets to replace what was lost. After cooling (take your time) carefully shake and repack the charcoal into the filter housing and at the end, back-fill what is missing with your new pellets.
The filter will now preform just as well as when it was new. All that nasty smoke and heat, is what you captured in a year of use, released all at once. It really is impressive to see.
here is the process:
Put the charcoal into a 5 or 10 gallon bucket. Prepare for the gas and heat and apply water from your garden hose. Stir and keep adding water until the thick yellow smoke and heat subside and the buckets go inert... it will take a while... and it is incredibly nasty.
Heat your gas grill to 500° and in batches run the wet clean charcoal through there for 15-20 minutes, till the edges of the charcoal just starts to char.
These two processes will vaporize about 5% of the original charcoal. Buy some activated charcoal pellets to replace what was lost. After cooling (take your time) carefully shake and repack the charcoal into the filter housing and at the end, back-fill what is missing with your new pellets.
The filter will now preform just as well as when it was new. All that nasty smoke and heat, is what you captured in a year of use, released all at once. It really is impressive to see.
Air box filters are the inline cartridge style I ordered. Giving it a try, I'm not sure what will happen longevity wise with it. But the form factor is extremely convenient for my setup
