Existing Room to Smoking Room

C

Costa

Cohibo Aficionado
Ok, so, have seen a lot of threads with guys making rooms into smoking rooms, a lot in the basement. My question is a little different, and hoping someone has had the experience of doing what I am thinking of doing and can give me feedback.

Had an architect over the house this weekend for an addition I am moving ahead with to give me 2 bedrooms over a now dis-attached garage and extend the living room over to the garage, doubling my "entertainment" area and creating one large home with an attached garage. This will give me 4 bedrooms, 2 on the first floor, 2 on the second.

What I want to do is turn the smaller one on the current first floor which is now my office into a smoking den. Has anyone taken this route before? My concern is the smell getting into the rest of the house (there is no attic above this room, it has cathedral ceilings, so I will need to put some sort of "in wall" air excahnger I think).

If someone has done this, and it tends to stink up the rest of the house, I may bail on the idea.

This room will open into the living room, and don't want a stale smoke smell to permeate that area. I would plan on sealing the door as well.

If anyone can let me know of their experiences of converting an existing room on a main floor into a "smoking room", I'd love to hear from you.

Thank you.
 
My room in my apartment is attached to the main living room/kitchen and when I smoke my pipe in there with the door shut it still stinks up the main area. Of course i don't have any kind of air exchange or anything. I just open my window and turn on the fan. Personally i wouldn't want my smoking room so close to the living room. Maybe one of the new rooms upstairs?

Taylor
 
The key is to isolate the room from the rest of the house as much as possible. Since the existing room has vents, its air is shared with the rest of the house. Either you can have no H/AC in the room and completely seal up the vents, or devise a sort of baffle system to close the vents when you're smoking in the room and clearing the room of smoke afterwards (you'd have to make sure that the baffles close 100% when in closed position). Sealing the door is a must, as you mentioned. As well, you'll need some sort of exhaust system to clear the smoke - simplest would be a high-capacity window fan. If you go that route, you'll still need a way for clean air to get into the room. A second window would work for this, if there is one. Be aware that even when practically sealing off the room from the rest of the house, the smell will likely permeate the carpet, ceiling and walls enough that you'll have plenty of smell escape when you open and close the door.
 
mikeyj23 said:
simplest would be a high-capacity window fan.
Click to expand...


How about a stove-top exhaust fan type setting, to vent the smoke out of the room? You could easily use the Baffle system to shut vents, and use some sort of exhaust system to vent out smoke. It could also look very professional, some sort of built in system rather than a window fan. I could even be hard wired to a light switch.

:2
 
Hmmmm, great input. Thanks. I think my fantasy of containing the smoke in one room is just that, a fantasy. Going to print this up and start doing some research, see if something is do-able, maybe get the builder involved.....
 
How much do you smoke in there? How important is it to not have the least bit of smell in the adjacent room? Does the temperature allow for good aeration by simply opening the window?

I smoke very little in my room. Perhaps one pipe and one cigar per week. I have an ionizer in there (Biozone), if possible I leave the window ajar (3 or 4inches) and I use an odor killer spray directly after smoking. That's it. The french doors are not sealed and sometimes I just leave them wide open). The rest of the house nor the room itself smell totally neutral (I mean each house has its own smell) as all my guests have noted in surprise. They all say they would not have thought somebody is smoking in here. Kitchen smells are far harder to get out, I find.

I'd say to try the simple things first. I would venture to say that my simple system could easily cope with one cigar per day. If you smoke more or are really sensitive or live with someone really sensitive, you might need more serious measures.

On a cultural side note:
Coming from Europe our kitchen are usually closed off from the rest of the house for this very reason. An open kitchen is called an American kitchen there. However, many Europeans would not hesitate to smoke in the house.

Till
 
The solution to pollution is dilution.

You need to do two things to make this work, 1) seal the room, 2) exhaust fan. Nothing else will do the trick.

1) Seal all the air vents, permanently. Consider sealing the door and even take a look at any wall penetrations (electric outlets, light switches, etc.). The better you seal the room, the less capacity (CFM) you'll need from the exhaust fan. You will NOT be able to seal the room 100%, consequently when your exhaust fan is on it will draw conditioned air from the rest of your house into your smoking room, and out the exhaust. Thus you may not need to worry about heating/air if your exhaust fan has a high enough capacity.

2) Get the biggest exhaust fan you can afford. Sealing a room sounds great, but can be difficult. If you have enough exhaust, you don't need to seal anything. A strong exhaust fan + minimal sealing measures will create a pressure differential between your room and the rest of the house. The smoking room will draw air from the rest of the house, through the door, through the walls, through the electric outlets, etc. So long as air is coming INTO the room, smoke can not go out. However without a solid airlock design (not realistic), you lose this pressure differential whenever you open the door and will likely get minor infiltration. You'll also need to leave the fan on for some time after you leave the room to flush whatever smoke remains. If your fan is big enough, you may not need to seal anything at all. To achieve the high flow you'll need some leakage into the room. A standard interior door may be sufficient, especially with minor weatherstripping or gasketing.

Install a high-flow exhaust fan, seal your air ducts, light a stogie and see what happens. If you still have infiltration into the house while the door remains closed, try weatherstripping/gasketing around the door. Next step would be to seal electric outlets, ceiling lights, light switches, doorknob, etc. Last step would be to replace the door, but I'll bet if this is necessary either your exhaust fan is too small or you have other leaks that aren't sealed.

I've got some experience designing chem/bio shelters, give me the size of your room and I can probably give you a target fan spec.
 
I guess another issue would be when you open the door to leave the room after a smoke.
I would suppose that their are two options i can think of immediately:
1) Double Doors - meaning that there would be one door, a breezeway, then another door [these seems expensive and not really feasible however]
2) those plastic 'things' that hang down from the top of the door frame that you would walk through -- sort've like the hippy beads :r

But yea, its tricky. Do the Sharper Image air purifiers do enough in a room to remove that much smoke? I don't know.

Best of luck - not an expert on the subject, but hopefully it helped a bit.
 
Super helpful guys, big time. Mark, let me get you a room size from the plans...

So much knowledgeable people here...
 
JordanWexler said:
I guess another issue would be when you open the door to leave the room after a smoke.
Click to expand...

That's another area where high airflow is the most practical solution. If the exhaust is high enough there won't be too much smell escaping the room.

Or you don't open the door while you're smoking, and wait 20-30 min before leaving when you're done :D
 
Costa, what about those questions I asked? While Mark is right on the money of what kinds of things one would need to do to make it perfect, you need to assess the real needs first in order to find out what you must do to get to your level of "smoke free".

After that, there is, of course, the point where you just want to have a full-blown smoking room with all the bells and whistles whether you need it or not. I can understand that mentality all too well. Me driving a 400hp car in a place where 65-75 is the fastest allowed speed is outright overkill but it sure is fun to drive anyway. If your smoking room is that kind of project, by all means, don't hesitate to take costly and time consuming measures because it's fun. If you just want to have a place where you can smoke comfortably without stinking up the rest of the house, all that might not be needed.

Just trying to save you some time, money and aggravation, bro.

Till
 
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