How to equilibrate house to lower CO2?

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Top Shelf Aquatics
Maybe when your oven needs replaced, consider electric. That helped a lot since the oven was not vented.
 
We have a viking standalone gas range and oven. The gas range is nearly meaningless to my co2 and CO count. The oven is different which can raise the co2 a bit, but still does not make the CO meter raise to even 1 when used for hours. We have an electric oven too, so we only use this oven when we need both, but it is usually on for many hours when we do use it.

I know that gas oven and range puts out CO, but I bought an expensive meter and it has never registered over 0 in my kitchen. If stuck in traffic it hits 2 to 5. If I have it in my garage when I fire up the big block Oldsmobile, it will hit 25-75 for periods of time.
 
Nutramar Foods
I only have a CO detector and it never went off during a big cook with our old gas oven. My CO2 monitor sure showed an immediate and big increase, with a pH drop in my tank.
 
On really hot summer days when the interior of my car is smoking hot I’ll open a window then open and close the opposite car door 15 to 20 times rapidly like a bellow. This actually works to decrease the temp in the car rapidly by exchanging the air. I’m curious if it would work to exchange the air in a house enough to decrease CO2.
 
I’ve been dealing with a bad CO2 levels since I moved into this basement apartment 3yrs ago. I have 2 amazing toddlers that produce sooo much co2. Kalkwasser was honestly the only thing I found to maintain a steady ph throughout the day. I also run 2 skimmers with scrubbers. One in the sump and one in the display. I also have a refugium running opposite light cycle.

I did the water test when my tank was 7.5 and was shocked when the water got up to 8.3 outside. Just scrubbers maintained the tank between 7.5 and 8. Water was still too acidic at the low points for corals to actually grow. Kalkwasser and scrubbers maintained my ph at 7.9+ when windows remain closed for multiple days.

I also switched to 6hr light intervals so I could get my low to maintain 8+ph and stop the high spikes with windows open in the spring and fall.

If I owned the apartment I would just put in a recirculating air unit over tinkering with the tank so much. It is not worth the headache when you are not there to open the windows. Oh and I tried the plant thing, maybe .02 difference with 10 large leaf plants in the room when they are on a 6hr light cycle and growing. Its like 4-10 plants per person per room to see a difference.
 
Deltec
I've tried the good old reduction of eating gassy foods and it works amazingly. On a serious note I had to shut a window last night after seeing some guy lingering around.
 
Deltec
Miami Reef said:
We did lots of cooking with the gas range. I noticed my pH is a lot lower than usual, so it’s time to open the windows.

What’s the quickest way to get the excess CO2 out? I live in hot, summer Florida, so I’d like to do this as quick as possible, then shut down the windows.

Will utilizing fans help, or should I just open all the windows and let it fix itself after a few hours?

I already noticed a nice pH rise after allowing indoor CO2 to passively escape. :)
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Germans have been doing this forever, it's called "Luften".

Open all the windows in the house for 5 - 8 minutes, then close them up again. Even once or twice a day will make a big difference.

When you are using the gas stove, it is ALWAYS good practice to ventilate at least the kitchen when the appliance is in use. Gas stoves/Ovens can really pump a ton of co2 into your home.
 
amoore311 said:
Germans have been doing this forever, it's called "Luften".

Open all the windows in the house for 5 - 8 minutes, then close them up again. Even once or twice a day will make a big difference.
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I bet you would see little to no improvement by opening your windows for such a small period of time. Try it and see if your tanks ph changes.
 
If the wind is blowing or you have a fan or power source, you can move a thousand CFM in a minute through a window. We have a 48" whole house fan that is something like 14,000 CFM, so 5-8 minutes can be 70-100k cubic feet of fresh air. This can make a huge difference and it also can have exponential effect when done regularly.
 
Tidal Gardens
Power source for sure to actively move the air. Windows open on a windy day gets a bit messy lol
 
jda said:
We have a viking range which has like one million BTU burners... well, something high like over 20K BTU and plenty of them. Our hood fan does nothing of note unless maybe you leave it on for hours after you are done cooking - it vents to the outside, but is like 6 inches and cannot stop burned food from setting off our old smoke alarms (changed them from ion to photoelectric). IMO, this hood is a rounding error for the house. Windows open and the attic fan do the dirty work if we need it. I got a few expensive digital CO alarms after getting a gas range and it has never read above zero even on big cooking holidays. The amazing thing about pro BTU range is that it cooks food so fast that maybe it breaks even with less BTU range that we had before that took longer. The gas oven can move the co2 more.
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I was looking for this answer of venting via the hood to the outside. I have not had an issue with using a gas stove. When I installed the stove via a license contractor, I made sure that the vent was up like a chimney and vented to the outside.
I cook a lot on the stove.

I also installed a celling fan above the take, my PH went up then stayed up, do to the air exchange from the fan. I also have a Co2 Scrubber online, that is vented to the attic, that goes to the skimmer to inject fresh air. it is 12pm, I am a 8.1

Last year we had replacement windows installed, the PH did not change. I figured the PH would go down with the new windows.

Before I added the Co2 scrubber my PH was running pretty low 9.4 so days.

Warning!! if you do vent your scrubber to the outside, make sure the is also carbon in the scrubber to filer out toxins for outside. For example accounting spraying for mosquitoes at night time with a fogger. Or the pest control company. I found out the hard way that the processes kill the tank also with bugs.
 
CoralNerd said:
I bet you would see little to no improvement by opening your windows for such a small period of time. Try it and see if your tanks ph changes.
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I'll message you my PayPal email and take that bet.

There's plenty of studies done on the german technique you can look up to educate yourself on the topic.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
In addition to the scrubber comments - Instead of changing the entire house air what if you changed just the skimmer air by running a line outside? Seems more cost effective than worrying about the entire house if only the tank matters
 
Point me to these studies. Wikipedia talks a lot about mechanical, fan driven. I don't know of any homes that were built with the plan to take in natural winds. You look at Battle Corals or Reefbum and they have a air exchange unit installed. JDA mentioned a whole house fan which is what I use during the hot months. I only have about ten years of ph monitoring under my belt but always willing to learn a new trick, if it actually is one.
 
External air to the skimmer is fine. It helps. It cannot overcome a massive amount of co2 in the room with the tank and/or sump since there is gas exchange happening on the surfaces, down the overflow. etc.

There is no more cost effective way to handle pH than to just air your home out. You an do it quick and simple in less than a minute or two a day - homes don't even have to cool down in the winter or warm up in the summer. If it hits 40 degrees in the afternoon here in Colorado, a few minites with the whole house fan can bring in enough air to lower the co2 by 200 ppm and not even move the thermostat. Even if it does move the thermostat, a few pennies of natural gas is cheap compared to even buying hose for an outside simmer like, a co2 scrubber and/or soda lime.

Do the math. Even a slight passive breeze with every window open for a minute can move in thousands of Cubic feet of air. if you have 8 windows that are 3x4 feet, that is nearly 100 feet. Air only needs to move 10 feet through those windows to get to 1000. A breeze at 1 mph moves 87 feet in a minute in open air and that does not even count the wind looking to rush around the walls and stuff, which makes the breeze faster. Do this every day and the results should be amazing.
 
I bet that dry Colorado air moves easy. A few minutes in my house with all giant windows open offers very little benefit and I'm willing to bet that's the norm.
 
I’m struggling with ph issues and will try and talk my wife to opening windows for 5-10 minutes a day and see if it makes a difference.
 

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