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Home made flow hood

MrFlyTrap2

OMG h8 pings
This is my home made flow hood, I built this off various designs I found off the internet. I debated how to build this for quite some time and this is what I came up with.

-For the clean area, using a 10 gallon tank with the bottom broke out courtesy of a hammer.
-Two filters were used, but too cheap to buy HEPA filters, so got premium 10x20 filters from Lowes. One even fits right into the black rim of the fish tank!
-I then built the surrounding enclosure with particle board. I decided on particle board since it's cheap, but also has a very smooth surface. I felt it was a a sturdy clean wood to use.
-An internal fan was used, however it actually doesn't provide enough current... but I havn't fixed this yet. We will see how much contamination it provides. If it's too much, $30 might fix that problem.
-After screwing it all together, cursing a few times due to bad measurements, here's how it turned out! (Microwave is for sterilization and late night nachos)

-Click on the thumbnails for larger pics:



 
Looks nice but how does the filter operate? I am pondering building a better unit than my sterelite transformed glove box so any input on how yours works would be great!

I know a microwave is faster but can you really sterilize with it? I bought a 16 quart pressure cooker at Walmart ($60) for my sterilizations. I could have got a microwave for about 1/2 that but people told me they didn't work as well as a PC (plus no metal implements can go in the nuke). Have you tried it yet - is everything staying contaminate free so far? It'd be nice not to have to fire up the PC just to do one or two small things.
 
Swords,

If you look, you can see two different filters, the filter at the top is a pre-filter that sucks in air. Behind that filter is a fan that is sitting on top of a wood platform with a hole in it. The fan pushes air through that and into the lower chamber. When the air enters the lower chamber, it then gets pushed through a second filter and into the clean area. While I suppose I could buy hepa filters, I wanted to see if I could get away with using very high quality home filters. So far I've had zero contamination with jars that are probably going on 4 weeks old. I'll try to take some more pics of the inside when I change the prefilter, it's starting to get pretty dusty.

I've done a few batches of media with the microwave, and a few with the pressure cooker. So far I like the microwave better. I can control how much I want the jars to boil, for how long, etc. With the PC, I have no clue what's going on in there, and some of my jars didn't even melt the agar completely. (That happens with the microwave too occasionally, but it's a quick fix, w/ the pressure cooker is hours lost, if not a day) So, I found the pressure cooker to be more of a hassle, maybe I'll use it for my tools but going back to nuking my media.
 
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you should be able to light a lighter, and have the flame stay lit but have movement.

gimmie
 
Cool Mr. Flytrap! 4 weeks is pretty good, if anything nasty were to pop up on your agar it "should" have by now - so that's very promising!

About the fan, are you using a PC fan, squirel cage fan or a heavier duty air duct fan?
 
yea it should be a squirrel fan, and make sure you use a pre filter (thats not a HEPA filter), other wise your HEPA filters life will go down allot.

Ive found that using a microwave is OK for Agar... but PC is just the safest method next an expensive autoclave. Glad its working out for you.
 
Swords, I used a high power AC fan which is about the same size as some of the larger fans, but it moves a lot more air.

Nepenthes AK, I did a test seeing how fast it would fill up a garbage bag for my airflow. It wasn't terrible, but I feel I need to add another fan of the same size for my setup. I'll try the lighter when I get home to see what it does.
 
Does anyone know what speed the fan should be? I've got a Sq fan that moves 500cfm - is that too much?
 
  • #10
yea it should be a squirrel fan, and make sure you use a pre filter (thats not a hepa filter), other wise your HEPA filters life will go down allot.

oh wait you aren't using HEPA filter... so your contamination is probably 100%... hard to tell though. I think HEPA filters are the equivalent to Revers Osmosis filters, either you get a good one, or its not a good idea to even bother.
 
  • #11
The type of fan isn't important if it fits into the relative design of the hood. The proper airflow is the important aspect.

And my contamination isn't 100%, I have sprouting cultures are now over a month old with no contamination. If it was 100% the contamination would have shown up before / or at the same time as germination.
 
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