You guys mentioned not scrubbing the air in the grow room with a carbon filter as it can adversely effect terpenes, but is it okay to have the carbon filter inside the grow room if you are exhausting the air out of the grow room vs. recirculating it?
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You’re fine either way. Air passed through carbon is not the same as an ozone generator releasing O3 into the air. Carbon filters don’t release anything into the air that could affect your trichomes.
@jmystro this is the video I am referring to where DGC says not to have a carbon filter in the grow room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft3bybCMykY
I’ve seen all the shows. You can think of smell as a shape. Change the shape and you’ll change or eliminate the smell. O3 in the air releases an oxide ion to a terpene molecule when it comes into contact. The addition of this oxide ion to the terpene changes the molecules shape thus eliminating the smell. Same thing happens with carbon. When one of carbon’s four sides interacts with a terpene, the carbon grabs and holds the terpene changing the shape, eliminating the smell. Carbon filters do not release carbon into the air like ozone where oxide ions become a free radical.
The idea is that the air volume holds a certain amount of terpenes in the air creating an equilibrium with the plant. Kind of like with humidity in the room and the plant but i don’t believe the same action. So if the filter remains in the room the terpenes in the air will react with the filter even if it is not moving air through it. So the equilibrium change would cause or allow plant to volatize or release terpenes to maintain equilibrium. So another benefit of sealed room. But either way any time you exhaust the room it will change equilibrium just not constantly when filter is in grow room. No paper study to determine actual loss that I know of and in nature they are not in a ziploc bag so not really sure how detrimental but could be that extra spectrum and intensity making up for the ziploc bag.
Outdoors there is no equilibrium. Outdoor would lose all terpenes and flavor if that was the case.
^^^ this! ^^^
Mystro nailed it…
If filtering the room effected the flower quality, then outdoors all the odor would just float away and outdoor weed would be flavorless…
Except it doesn’t … because odor doesn’t work that way!
Agree! I think it’s more during the drying process where the carbon filters can cause issues with the terpines, but we still need a way to handle the smell during the drying process..
Ya not sure Guru never really dissected it more just bro science I’m guessing especially when the Dude gets on it (grow experience top notch). I know that plants have some control over the release just not sure if it’s necessarily control or a stimuli situation. Increased heat or light intensity proven to release more terpenes. But i know they recently observed a pine forest releasing I believe pinene but a terpene any how that seeded cloud formation and reduced temperatures of the forest. Im with you on the lack of individual plant equilibrium in nature.
I looked it up alpha pinene and a staggering amount is pumped into the lower atmosphere. 50,000,000,000,000 grams of the stuff. 50 trillion grams of alpha pinene alone also produced by rainforests every year. So less being released at night with the decrease in temperature possibly also effecting not just the plant temperature but the total amount able to be held in the atmosphere. Obviously hard to fathom but if that much is in the atmosphere and we know there are saturation points to solvents then the science is there just hard to think in the grand scale. All depending whether there is a saturation point attainable by plants in our big bubble. The earth maintains so many balances this could just be another over looked aspect to our planet. Just trying to understand why the university student would mention something like this without any merit. By the way im just talking out my rear smoked up feeling good lol. Hope the DGC puts you on your ass with smoke Jmystro Dude said something about the days finally dwindling down. Much love and respect if you only knew. Stay irie
I’ve ran the filter in a 4×4 tent and outside of the tent and I notice absolutely no difference. To hell with this discussion, it doesn’t matter. Case closed.
@Memes Were you exhausting the air from the grow room in both scenarios or scrubbing the air when the filter was in the grow room?
I was scrubbing the air and exhausting outside a window.
I think I said thst right lol…
Both grows i exhausted through a carbon filter and out a window. 1 with the filter hung in the tent and 1 with the filter outside the tent (in a bedroom).
Okay so to get a true comparison, the carbon filter needs to be eliminated from contact with the grow room, which is why they recommend a sealed grow room. Tough to do for many though..
Hmm..I see your point, but the filter isn’t pulling air from the tent in a way that there is a negative pressure. I see no way it could be equal unless it’s always equal.
Sorry, “it” meaning the filter in or out of the tent within the same space.
—I control the bedroom environment and use passive air exchange in the tent except on high points fans kick on.
I’ve heard the guys say running a filter in your room is a bad idea but I’m pretty sure the science doesn’t work that way.
I’ve almost always run a filter inside my room and I’ve never noticed any loss of odor/flavor when I have.
I’m basically continuously scrubbing my flower room and I had a bunch of people commenting on how smelly the bag I brought to Denver was… pretty sure it’s not negatively effecting my grow…
Odor is a physical particle floating around in the air. Carbon filters basically “sift” those particles out of the air like dust getting caught in an air filter. I don’t really see how that would be effecting the final flower quality.
I have 2 carbon filter in my grow space. One constantly scrubbing and one on an exhaust fan that I use to draw down humidity. The one for exhaust is as high as I could get it and my passive intake is as low as I could get it. The one constantly scrubbing is about 1 foot above the height I allow my plants to get. I haven’t noticed any change in the terpene profile of the flowers since adding the constant scrubber. My house no longer smells like growing cannabis either. If there is a loss of terpene then it is so minimal that the benefits far outweigh the negative effects.
We have 3 kids in deep prohibition. Carbon filter is an absolute must for us. And I would recommend the more the merrier.
This was featrured on EP 824 FYI. Thanks for the post!