you should remember that in an apartment, there is no insulation on the inner walls separating rooms. However, there is insulation in the walls that separate the different apartments in order to cut down on noise, so it's probably not as loud as you think it is next door.
then i always wind up with crazy effing tweakers that listen through my walls with microscopes as in the past, they've given me grief over a freakin' box fan on low, mixing soil in a plastic tub, opening closet doors !!!, and even freakin' watering plants where the soda bottles i put a few little holes in the cap for make little bubbling sounds. it REALLY gets in the way! oh i effing hate apartment neighbors!!!!!!!! the nosy old bitches where i am now not only got in the way of my transplanting when they started acting up over mixing soil in my livingroom with a neighbor on the other side of my kitchen being the most likely to hear... i'd like to run that bitch over let me tell you, but also managed to ruin the grow when i ended up putting my fan on manual when my lights would turn on and one night i forgot and everything got scorched.
for fans, speed controls DO help, but then as you lower your speed, they freakin' start humming! i really like that MDF & bungee setup... that should dampen sound nicely. i just piled a bunch of clothes over and under my plastic duct fan that's quieter than an inline donut as i heard it side by side when the first speed controller i bought failed in just a couple days. it would be nice if they'd make a version that's lower output so it naturally runs slower so when you put it on a dimmer, it runs even slower and quieter. sound control just doesn't seem to be any manufacturer's priority. i'm way more concerned about dBs than CFMs.
another way that should help dampen noise would be to not use the light poly hoses and use the stamped steel ones, though it makes for a big, heavy and expensive system, but if you're doing a permanent setup, you could even wrap your hoses with fiberglass or something to further dampen noise. i don't think hoses are the loudest thing though, it's that exhaust! they make inline mufflers that are basically stamped steel cases lined with perforated ducts just like a glasspack muffler, but without the fiberglass. those are a couple hundred dollars or more though.
i plan on making my own version when i get back up and running using cardboard concrete pouring tubes that are less than $10 and either lining one with "egg crate" foam mattress liners, or getting some perforated sheet metal to make and inner tube with just like the factory units. if anything, that should be even quieter too as heavy cardboard isn't going to ring like metal wants to.
i don't see why anyone would use an old school magnetic ballast anymore as digital ones are quieter, more efficient, and even have higher outputs. i know 600w lumateks in particular used to have reliability issues, but the last i've heard, those have been worked on. they don't have many miles on them yet, but both of my lumatek 400 watters are still working fine.
i don't get hydroponics either. it's way too much fuss. when something goes wrong, things get bad quickly, you create humidity issues, all of the added technology increases likelihood of failures by going again the KISS principle, and the last i heard, you still get better flavor out of organics. oh yeah... best reason for organics... it's so much cheaper!
as to using egg crate foam for sound INSULATION, as on a wall, i don't think it would help much as it doesn't have much density to it, but it is good for breaking reflections back into a room up. if you want to dampen TRANSMISSION of sound waves, i'd say mass is the way to go like sand and lead shot filling in speaker stands or rubber mats for autosound. before i'd put mattress liner foam on a wall, i'd use a heavy old school sleeping bag, or those heavy moving mats movers use. those are really cheap too i think.
then there's though heavy duty foam "puzzle piece" tiles designed to be used on a floor... i bet those would dampen sound a lot better on a wall than 1/4" - 1" thick egg crate foam. i've used it on my walls in the past for stereo use because it's so much cheaper than actual acoustic tiles, but it didn't seem to help with my neighbors much. i'd use something heavier and denser to insulate for sound.
regarding floor noise, the former dealer i showed my room to suggested putting plywood or MDF down. that sounds like a good dense solution and could be applied to walls as well just by leaning them up against them. not only would they insulate with their mass, but the angling would also break standing waves and reflections up by making walls non-parallel, but carrying a bunch of sheets of plywood into an apartment is a suspicion magnet for sure.
hey... here's a really cheap and easy way to add mass to a wall... get some boxes and fill them with hay or some other cheap stuffing material with some weight. the modular approach always works for moving stuff in stealth. "visual noise" is noise too.
if no one mentioned mylar insulation yet, that's really good for blocking most light and heat. it's about $50 for a roll of of mylar "bubble pack" if you get it at a home store and $100 or more at grow shops, but it works. getting it stuck to a wall, especially one that has plaster it's hard to thumb tack is a bitch though and masking tape just doesn't cut it, but you might get it to stick with duct tape, especially high tack, but then you're going to stain your walls and have deposit and/or landlord suspicion issues.
STILL reading this thread... WHOA! blow through carbon filters? SHIT that's an awesome idea! it prevents any possible blow through of carbon dust into your lamps first off as i had a TERRIBLE experience trying to use natural charcoal and a sweatshirt for a filter... basically my room smelled like a fire and my fan was covered with dust, but the REAL benefit would be that it should make for an AWESOME noise filter!
i like that idea A LOT! going to scratch the DIY system i started with a pair of milk crates with a lower airtight vented chamber underneath a 2nd crate lined with screen material at the bottom i intended to put ahead of my lights, but you REALLY want to blow a DIY unit off outside before hooking it up to your system if you're using aquarium activated charcoal.
i really like that trick... hope i learn a few more. i just always think of air in terms that it's easier to pull than push, so an exhaust filter never entered my mind. another perk of doing your filter on the exhaust end would be that you could easily incorporate it into a light leak barrier. i always vent indoors, and getting a light shield to work with a door has always been a pain, but with the filter itself serving as a light block, then a simpler lighter wind shield to guide warm air out of the room could be taped directly to a door.
i wouldn't be surprised that not blocking the intake might help airflow when you're pushing your exhaust right by your fan.
it's too effing bad you can't get freakin' precision wood cuts at home improvement shops. having a woodworker make cuts for a box ain't cheap! you could probably get a raw speaker box cheaper and hack it yourself.
regarding adding "extra walls", plasterboard is heavy & dense, and very non resonant besides being dirt cheap. plywood makes a lot more noise when you wrap on it, so it's very good for dampening noise. (i'm only up to page 13 here).
the best trick to use with extra walls, just like hanging motors on bungee (there's also the hifi trick of floating them on hemorrhoid inner-tubes as done with turntables) would be to isolate them. that's what recording studios do with their floors. they "float" the studio by resting the floor on hockey pucks on top of a sub floor. just put an air space between your walls with as little hard contact as possible to transmit vibration. that's why insulated windows are so quiet. making them non parallel helps too. if you've ever seen a recording studio window, it's at least 2 panes thick with the glass angled. just leaning plasterboard into a wall seems the simplest route, and is easiest to break down.
if you need to stop vibrations between surfaces that are in contact with each other, nothing beats expensive sorbothane which, if you sandwich and egg inside, you can smack with a hammer and not break the egg. it's been used as feet and record mats on turntables for it's dampening qualities. bungee and springs are much cheaper though.
regarding bubblers, instead of using those, put a fishtank "waterfall filter" in your water reservoir. those are virtually silent if their lip is submerged, and even if they aren't the sound of trickling water is less obtrusive and more likely to make someone think fish tank or even indoor waterfall. as much water as they move, i'd bet they're more efficient than bubble stones too.
dynamat doesn't exactly "stop sound" at the minimal thicknesses it's used in, what it does is dampen resonances in the steel of a car's body. though it does add a layer of density. it's main purpose though is converting the vibrations of whatever it's attached to into heat. if, say, you were to sandwich in between two sheets of MDF, it would dampen more noise than if you directly bonded them together by "resonating at a different frequency". mixing materials is good for noise reduction for that purpose.
CHEAPEST sound deadening tech? mount your fans as far from any shared walls, floors, or ceilings as possible.
Does anyone know if i have to worry about the extra electricity drawing attention?
thanks
that's why i like to run my lights at night. meter readers etc. are more likely to notice your meters spinning in the daytime. i like to run 7-7.
actually, the same principle as fans applies. A/C produces gobs of heat. it's just that it's all outside. that's why they have those big heat exchange radiators on them. ANY powered device produces heat. the inside of your fridge might be cold, but you can feel the geat from that when it's running too.
i mainly want to do this so that any air that might possibly escape and may smell, (i am putting a can fan filter on it tho) will be released about 20 feet in the air, above anyone's head walking by...
it doesn't matter. you've never smelled someone's fireplace running? once the air gets outside and cools down, it disperses and some of it falls down so you can smell it. you should still use odor control. i worked with a buddy that had just one plant on a second story using a simple passive open window for cooling. one day, when there wasn't any wind, you could smell the gal from half a block away in any direction. wind can blow air down too. that's what a downdraft is.
Someone brought up noise cancelling in here and I have considered that. I'm just not sure what kind of
computer software I need to create that whitenoise. I figured I could create an audio recording of the noise in the
bathroom and than process it and loop it through a stereo 24/7 and cancel the sound of the air movement entirely?
you're only adding noise to noise with white noise. the best you can do is MASK noise, but do to the random nature of white noise, sometimes you'll cancel sound, but others, you'll re-enforce it. the person that mentioned miking your duct was on the right track. that tech has also been used in automotive systems where a speaker plays the sound of the motor out of phase with the exhaust so that it cancels out, BUT you should be able to do the same thing with at most, a mic, amp, speaker and digital delay. mic the output of the fan, and, in theory, if you adjust the delay time, you should be able to cancel out the sound when the delay puts it out of phase with the original sound, BUT it might only work at specific frequencies. reversing the polarity of the speaker's + & - might be needed too to get an exact opposite phase output, but, you might be able to do it even simpler by just adjusting how far the speaker is away from the mic until you reach a phase cancellation distance. that's why, if you have an unboxed subwoofer, you can barely hear it at low frequencies because the back wave cancels out the forward. with a mic, you use the sound itself to cancel itself out if you can get a precisely out of phase signal, but it seems rather tricky as fan noise isn't generally at a fixed frequency, like a car motor, which is much easier to cancel, but then again, if you're using the exact sound as your source, and it remains the same from it's origin to the exhaust, you MIGHT be able to get a precise out of phase sound. moving a speaker further or closer would alter the time differential to possibly get an out of phase sound. it'd be best to experiment with that in the day time. then there's an even WORSE possibility that you get feedback howl. to work properly, a manufacturer should probably design the system themselves, but you can get mics, amps and raw speakers dirt cheap, heck, you could use PC speakers and i've seen dirt cheap mic kits that include preamps. it's worth a try, but it might not work as easily as theory says it should. subwoofers don't totally cancel themselves out in free air.
If you do vent into your crawl space, it is sealed from the house and your growing space you might want to consider a ozone generator. They are relatively inexpensive, quiet and work well for odor elimination.
don't believe the hype! i bought a used ionizer tower cheaply and it did little for odor other than create it's own nasty metallic odor that was even worse.
does reducing the size of the duct on the input of an inline fan increase the noise?
as mentioned, yes. it's called the venturi effect. that's why you see "velocity stacks" on top of hot rod carburetors sometimes. it makes the air move faster as it gets squeezed. jets work more or less on the same principle and they're anything but quiet.
I just got a variac transformer for 45 bucks .... man did it do wonders !!!!
The sound of the fan is gone if i need to lower the power , with the speedster , it hummed like crazy , now at nite I can have the fan on at less than half speed and it is no sound what so ever , period !!!
cool! i'd give you rep fort hat, i'm i've given too much out already. the speed controller i used on my fan barely helps as once you lower the speed a certain amount, it starts humming even louder defeating the purpose entirely. if you REALLY want silent air moving and don't care so much about CFM, those ionic breezes are silent, but are likely health hazards or might give you that nasty metallic taste a regular ionizer can
I currently am awaiting a Panasonic whisper inline fan. It's 6" rated at 240cfm and has a 1.4 sones or mid 30ish dba.
panasonic fans are $200+ when i looked into those. i bought a soler and palau TD-150 6" duct fan for under $140 delivered, i think, and has similar noise specs to panasonic units with some of the smaller ones rated as low as 21dB. i was trying to fuind the thread where i originally posted for a link to the noise levels, but it's probably in their PDFs. there's an "S" model that's supposedly their "silent" one, but i can say for sure mine's quieter than a dayton and cheaper than a panasonic. just don't use the internal low speed setting along with a speed controller., that might be why the 1st one i bought got fried. you also have to wire a plug into it yourself which is a pain, but worth $50 or more in savings. it's a lot easier to mount too than a big heavy steel donut.
