Last year a buddy and I both got really interested in internal air quality. You can purchase CO2 monitors like this one on amazon. I found that my office was about 700 ppm and my car varied based on whether I was using outside and or inside air as the source for my air conditioning.
We also had a co-worker that had a device that would measure PM2.5 particulates (I'm not sure where he got it from, but I'm told it was quite expensive).
The most intersting result I got from all of this had to do with my home office. I found that if I was working in it for a long time with the windows closed, I would get over 1000ppm CO2 in under 2 hours. As a result, I made sure to open my windows every time I was in there for more than 15 minutes.
This actually made a lot of sense to me after the fact because I would often getting tired while working in there, but I had previously assumed it was from lack of stimulation or laziness.
Not really going anywhere with this, but if you are someone who is interested in this topic because you have bad air quality locally, I encourage you to look around for tools that let you measure the environments you frequent.
I see a number of them on Amazon, but I guess if this is something you are worried about, you would be better off spending the money on an air-to-air exchanger; if you do have a problem, that's what you will solve it with anyway.
They get plenty of FAE from the 12 holes. If you want to actually measure the air quality in your tub here is a cheap meter. It may not be the most accurate like the hand held one's that are around $1k but it will give you an idea of how much air fresh air your tub is getting. https://www.amazon.com/CO2Meter-AZ-0004-Temperature-Relative-Humidity/dp/B001PDGFR8
If you don’t believe published CO2 numbers, you can buy CO2 sensors for yourself.
Go ahead. I’ll wait here for you to test out the CO2 levels at your house and see if they’ve risen to 400 ppm or not.
They got them on amazon, for indoor use:
The air quality sensor was a gift so I'm not sure where it's from
Thanks for the suggestion of using either potassium carbonate or potassium bicarbonate. I like the idea of using either of them much better than my idea of using potassium hydroxide, but I suspect that they carry their own hazards.
In particular, I lack a flume hood (I am not a chemist), so the flumes would be released directly into my local environment. The most obvious risk is asphyxiation from the displacement of oxygen in a confined space. I had planned to conduct the reaction in doors to avoid the unpleasantness of the outdoors, so some precautions might be merited. I have an atmospheric carbon dioxide meter that I could use to watch the carbon dioxide concentration:
https://www.amazon.com/CO2Meter-AZ-0004-Temperature-Relative-Humidity/dp/B001PDGFR8
Perhaps, I should also get a carbon monoxide meter too in case I somehow mess up in a way that produces significant carbon monoxide. If the concentrations go too high, I could open a window to vent the air and then evacuate. Venting the indoor air is not desirable in the middle of winter, but it is acceptable in an emergency.
I could just do some math to estimate the worst case scenario (and I likely will as soon as I remember/work out how to do it), but having a contingency plan in case something goes wrong with the by products of the reaction seems prudent.
There is also the not yet well understood risk of reduced cognitive function from elevated local atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations:
Maybe I should do a few practice runs outdoors first (despite my aversion to the outdoor environment) to gain some experience in handling the reactants so there is less to consider should anything go wrong when conducting it in doors (and less that can go wrong on the first try).
Is my thinking offbase or does this sound reasonable?
No problem. :)
Yeah, tent is in the corner of my office room with some ducting that runs to a nearby window for exhausting. I just leave a couple vent flaps open near the bottom of the tent and the negative air pressure caused by the exhaust fan draws in the office room air through those passive vents. If I leave the exhaust fan off then my temperatures spike quickly into the 90s and even 100s if I let it go long enough. Keeping exhaust off basically turned the tent into a gross muggy oven. lol. I live in Southern California so my house temps/RH are pretty close to the average "ideal" before attempting to optimize even further for specific strains via CO2 enrichment. I'd still like to try it out someday though.
Along with that THC Farmer link in my last reply, I thought this article was particularly interesting: http://www.htgsupply.com/informationcenter/resources/co2-ventilation-for-growing
I personally feel the importance of conforming exactly to the VPD charts is a little overblown and one of those things that's easy to get hung up on when starting. I certainly did for a little bit. That's not to say it doesn't help, because there are some very convincing grow logs where they controlled all environmental factors and provided CO2 enrichment to really put the plants into overdrive growth rates. I just don't feel it's worth the headache for most hobby grows starting out because high temp/humidity also invites awful things like powdery mildew and fungus. Both of which completely destroy the grow and make anything else a moot point once they've taken hold.
The air quality sensor I use is a Bluair Aware. It's wifi connected and I already owned it from before growing so I just re-purposed it for the tent. It's absolutely over priced for this application though and there has got to be much cheaper options out there. Something like these maybe:
Also, the money you save with that Ppm meter you could get this. Indoor Air Quality Meter - CO2, Temperature & Relative Humidity https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001PDGFR8/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_rbOqvb19GFVEB https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001PDGFR8/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_rbOqvb19GFVEB