We are eagerly waiting the arrival of our machine and began thinking about our venting options. Our machine will be in basement on exterior wall. Directly above (about 9’ high) the dryer vent runs to the outside. There are no windows in this space so we have to use the dryer vent. My question is, can we split the vent at the exterior wall and will the be the need of some sort of damper to keep smoke from backfilling to the dryer? With a 9-10’ ft run, I’m guessing we may need a fan to help pull the smoke out?
Any comments/thoughts would be much appreciated!
Length does suggest in-line fan would be needed. Would suggest 2 dampers. 1 to block any chance of dryer flow back into the forge. One to block flow forge into dryer. The latter could possibly be blocked simply by having it Y towards the vent and having the fan right there. It would be harder to get any backflow to the dryer at that point, I would think.
It sounds like I have a similar setup to what you have, though I am venting out a basement window. I have the option of cutting a dryer vent, and you might as well- which is probably the way to go. You could also try and add a damper to your vent, I don’t think it would be an issue, but that is definitely not my area of expertise.
Anyway, because of the longer run, I definitely recommend a booster fan. I am using one that was around $30 from Amazon, called a “Vivosun”. Once I added this fan, a lot of my odor issues went away. Here is a thread that I wrote up on it, and it has links as well.
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Thanks to all for the tips all! We are patiently waiting the arrival of our Glowforge (tomorrow). Tonight we finally finished the hookup to our dryer vent! We will be adding an inline vent fan to help push the smoke out…
Hello, Im really curious as to how this has worked out for you… Looking at a similar set up…