Carbon filter issue (first grow)

5 weeks into flower and I’ve noticed that the pre filter sleeve on my carbon filter was black covered some type of Black debris… I ordered a new pre filter (white) and was shocked to see it black the next day. I then express ordered a new carbon filter and changed it the next day the predicted was black again. my plants seem pretty happy other than some of the black dust falling on some of them when I changed the filter. Does anybody know what’s going on and how I can fix it before it causes unforeseen issues in my tent.

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Where do you have your tent? Is it anywhere near a stove or something? That’s definitely not good. @Myfriendis410 @MattyBear @garrigan62 @Bogleg

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The tent is in my basement but you may have solved my issue by your question lol… I just realized my heater that I use during my dark periods was pretty close and directly facing my intake fan. The heater was placed there a few days ago around the time I noticed this problem so hopefully moving the heater is the solution and there’s no future harm don to the grow.

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@HornHead

Do you have your exhaust fan setup to blow air into the filter or suck air through the filter?

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Suck air through @darkillusion3526 which seems more concerning to me

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Sounds like you got it to me. You can wash those prefilters to. Just make sure that they are completely dry before putting back on. If not the moisture will wreck the filter

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Maybe you have the fan running to high and its blowing carbon dust out of the filter into the filter sleeve?

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Yeah appreciate you man… I removed the heater so we should see tomorrow… I’ll let you know @HornHead

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@darkillusion3526 Also very possible… I’ve been running everything at the same speeds since I’ve started the grow but I forget these peicess of equipment have to be maintained and swapped sometimes… But turning it down now and will look for results. So I’ll update you as well.

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I know with my filter I have it setup to blow air through it and I took the sleeve off for better airflow and without the speed control switch I would get a nice coating of black dust all over the place, and with the switch just a light dusting I sweep up every few days.

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I think @darkillusion3526 is onto something with the direction your fan is blowing. I would double check that first because it looks like the carbon is being blown out. Some filters don’t work both ways.

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I have never seen the outside of the filter look like that. My first thoughts is the fan is running backwards and blowing the carbon Out of the filter I would check the output of the exhaust and see if it’s sucking in or blowing out. Is there a directional flow arrow on your fan? Does the inside of your tent have negative pressure or positive pressure? Just my thoughts. Good luck.

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i also think the fan is turned the wrong way to be getting that much black residue on the filter that quickly of a build up. like they said above check the air flow again and the arrows on the fan to make sure air flow is correct something u want to get corrected asap

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@kellydans so I just checked and the fan is in the correct position. I did notice that when I detach the fan the air flow increases significantly but when I attach it back to the filter it stops or slows down significantly. The tent did have a positive pressure issue but as of now I removed the filter from the tent but the fan is still running on low so the pressure is regulated.

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@Apollo1023 Thanks for the follow up. Good to hear you are getting back on track. I would Get a new filter sounds like that one was plugged up. Now you have negative pressure in the tent with no filter. That’s good.

Grab an AC Infinity filter. Pretty cheap and they work great

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Did moving the heater fix your issue?