DIY Venting Indoors - Use Your Bathroom Exhaust :D

[tronN00dles]

Hey everybody,

tronN00dles here with an overview of how I go about exhausting my tent inside my house. I do not vent outside (well, at least not directly), nor do I vent into my attic (although I do bring some duct through my attic). Hopefully this may be some assistance to any folks who are interested in setting up a tent, but aren't able to exhaust directly outside.

So like many people, I don't like the idea of bringing exhaust outside. I have nosey neighbors (even though I live in a province where I can legally grow 4 plants) and I didn't really want to deal with the questions of why I'm drilling holes through my house. I also live in a part of Canada with super cold winters, so there's an added caveats of insulation requirements. On that same subject, it's also not ideal for me to vent into my attic. This would cause severe condensation and subsequent mold on account of our climate.

So what's a tronN00dles to do?

My solution was this: bring my exhaust up through my ceiling into an adjacent bathroom. My tent is the walk-in closet of my master bedroom, and the bathroom is the ensuite. I've basically turned my ensuite bathroom into an "exhaust room". Fortunately my wife is OK with this

The bathroom has a bathroom fan of it's own, plus a return/exhaust for the air-exchanger. I've also fitted it with an extra dehumidifier. It also has a window, if need be. I have a carbon filter in my tent, so by the time the air reaches the bathroom, it's largely scrubbed of odor anyway. I should point out, before doing this, I vented directly back in to my bedroom. I will say that even with a carbon filter, there was "some" odor in my bedroom during peak flowering. However, by venting into this bathroom, any residual stank-air is exhausted from the house by the bathroom fan / air exchanger that are meant to get smelly air out of bathroom anyhow :smoking:

The bathroom in the bedroom is also where guests are probably least likely to visit anyhow, so it's a perfect solution.

Here's a few pics of how I went about doing this, as well as an overview of the material used:

First, to navigate in my attic, I cut a bunch of 2x10 boards to essentially make a bridge to walk across the rafters/joists in my attic. I poked some coat hangars up through the ceiling to mark the location of my tent and my bathroom. I have blown in insulation up there, and used a rod/mesh for getting debris out of a swimming pool to essentially "scoop" the insulation out of my way, so I could attach the boards to my rafters to make my bridge from point A to point Z. Again, it's just drywall under the rafters, so my biggest concern was falling through the ceiling. Lol. Anyway, I took my time with this process. Here's a pic of my "bridge":

Then, I drilled a 6-inch holes in the ceiling above my closet, as well as above the bathroom. I then took four 6" plastic circular flanges from Amazon

(like this:

)

and connected them back to back, so I could feed them down through the holes and have a portion of flange sticking out of either side. Before I did this, I sealed them together with aluminum foil tape. I then secured them to the ceiling with nuts and bolts. I connected the two ports up in my attic with a length of 6" insulated duct. I then "re-scooped" all the blown-in insulation back how I found it, to make sure I stay nice and toasty in the winter )

In my closet, I simply brought the exhaust from my carbon filter up to the ceiling port like this:

And then in my bathroom, I connected a 6" air diffuser like this:

Essentially, I'm using the bathroom's own exhaust system to remove scrubbed air from my house. Works like a charm

I hope this can be of some use to someone.

Cheers,

tronN00dles

 

[Bruce Campbell]

Great job - looks professionally done

Few notes:

- Take the grill off and see if you can seal any gaps. Mine had a pretty large gap between the actual housing exhaust outlet and the fan mounting plate. That, combined with the slots where the grill clipped in, resulted in a good amount of bypass / recirculation before I taped them up.

- Be mindful of the age and condition of the fan. They don't often get upgraded, can be pretty old, and were never really meant to be run 24/7. If the bearings start to wear out (you'll hear them), it can overheat. Mine's the 25-yr-old original from when the house was built. The coil gets hotter than I'd like, so I have it on a 20 min on / 40 min off cycle.

- Most plug into an outlet inside the housing which is then controlled by the bathroom wall switch. If you have room inside the housing, you may be able to fit a smart outlet in there. Otherwise, I think there are a few hard-wire smart outlets that are sized to fit inside the wall box behind the switch, if you're comfortable doing wiring. A lot of the smart outlet manufacturers also have temperature and humidity sensors that you can then use to control the fan (or just set it on a schedule).

 

[Olderfart]

Hey everybody,

tronN00dles here with an overview of how I go about exhausting my tent inside my house. I do not vent outside (well, at least not directly), nor do I vent into my attic (although I do bring some duct through my attic). Hopefully this may be some assistance to any folks who are interested in setting up a tent, but aren't able to exhaust directly outside.

So like many people, I don't like the idea of bringing exhaust outside. I have nosey neighbors (even though I live in a province where I can legally grow 4 plants) and I didn't really want to deal with the questions of why I'm drilling holes through my house. I also live in a part of Canada with super cold winters, so there's an added caveats of insulation requirements. On that same subject, it's also not ideal for me to vent into my attic. This would cause severe condensation and subsequent mold on account of our climate.

So what's a tronN00dles to do?

My solution was this: bring my exhaust up through my ceiling into an adjacent bathroom. My tent is the walk-in closet of my master bedroom, and the bathroom is the ensuite. I've basically turned my ensuite bathroom into an "exhaust room". Fortunately my wife is OK with this

The bathroom has a bathroom fan of it's own, plus a return/exhaust for the air-exchanger. I've also fitted it with an extra dehumidifier. It also has a window, if need be. I have a carbon filter in my tent, so by the time the air reaches the bathroom, it's largely scrubbed of odor anyway. I should point out, before doing this, I vented directly back in to my bedroom. I will say that even with a carbon filter, there was "some" odor in my bedroom during peak flowering. However, by venting into this bathroom, any residual stank-air is exhausted from the house by the bathroom fan / air exchanger that are meant to get smelly air out of bathroom anyhow :smoking:

The bathroom in the bedroom is also where guests are probably least likely to visit anyhow, so it's a perfect solution.

Here's a few pics of how I went about doing this, as well as an overview of the material used:

First, to navigate in my attic, I cut a bunch of 2x10 boards to essentially make a bridge to walk across the rafters/joists in my attic. I poked some coat hangars up through the ceiling to mark the location of my tent and my bathroom. I have blown in insulation up there, and used a rod/mesh for getting debris out of a swimming pool to essentially "scoop" the insulation out of my way, so I could attach the boards to my rafters to make my bridge from point A to point Z. Again, it's just drywall under the rafters, so my biggest concern was falling through the ceiling. Lol. Anyway, I took my time with this process. Here's a pic of my "bridge":

View attachment 1377571

Then, I drilled a 6-inch holes in the ceiling above my closet, as well as above the bathroom. I then took four 6" plastic circular flanges from Amazon

(like this: View attachment 1377572 )

and connected them back to back, so I could feed them down through the holes and have a portion of flange sticking out of either side. Before I did this, I sealed them together with aluminum foil tape. I then secured them to the ceiling with nuts and bolts. I connected the two ports up in my attic with a length of 6" insulated duct. I then "re-scooped" all the blown-in insulation back how I found it, to make sure I stay nice and toasty in the winter )

In my closet, I simply brought the exhaust from my carbon filter up to the ceiling port like this:

View attachment 1377574

And then in my bathroom, I connected a 6" air diffuser like this:

View attachment 1377576

Essentially, I'm using the bathroom's own exhaust system to remove scrubbed air from my house. Works like a charm

I hope this can be of some use to someone.

Cheers,

tronN00dles

Very well done gro bro! Excellent idea, and nicely executed.