Cigar Room | Discussion, Comments

Discussion and Comments

Posted by Ryan Deyer in Cigar Room on 23 Aug 2010 | 25 Comments

I created this section in case anyone has any comments or questions on the cigar room.

25 Comments

Ryan- Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Your site is outstanding and the single most informative website out there on how to build a home cigar room. I am planning on a room that will be about 17x13 (~220 sq ft.) I know you used a monster exhaust fan, but you only run it at ~1/3 (~325 CFM) . How big do you think I need to go on the exhaust fan? Would any of these work? http://www.ventingdirect.com/index.cfm?page=product:compare&categoryId=0 Thanks!

Michael / 18 Nov 2011 / 4:47 pm / Reply
- It's nice having the extra strength in case you need it. Over the weekend I had a poker game going on and a bunch of people were using the room at once. I had the power between 50-75% and it was nice to have. Your room is bigger than mine too so I would say 500 CFM is your starting point. If you have the option, go bigger and just dial it down as needed with the variable speed switch.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 22 Nov 2011 / 3:50 pm / Reply
  - Just wondering how loud your exhaust fan/unit is when it's running at 30% and at 75% then at full tilt while in the cigar room? Does it rumble, or shake the wall, or is it fairly loud/quiet at any setting? is there any whistle at the ceiling vent from the intake? Is there anything you would have done different? Thank you for having this site up, it's a real help for those of use who are trying to do the same thing but lack some of the pertinent information.
    
    Joe / 14 Feb 2012 / 3:49 am / Reply
    - It's actually very quiet. Since the fan is outside of the room its hard to hear. All you can pick up, even if it's at 100%, is the sound of air pull (which sounds a bit like whistling), but even that's hard to hear if you have the television on. There's no vibration to speak of or shaking. If I'm at less than half strength most people wouldn't even probably know its on if the television was on too.
      
      Ryan Deyer / 14 Feb 2012 / 6:34 pm / Reply
My compliments on the cigar room. Outstanding! Currently, my wife & I are looking for a new home, so I don't have anything of reference yet. Just a few basic questions though. From your experience what would have been the minimum height requirement for the basement to handle this project? Did you have to get any special codes from your town, or just the regular "refinishing my basement" notification? Were there any specific websites/references in particular used that aided in the planning/finishing process? Finally, for the more specific items, i.e. ducting system, exhaust fans, etc, did you just go to a plumbing supply store. Sometimes when I need specific items I find that it takes me endless hours just to find the right source. Thanks so much. Again, really nice work! Hopefully I can match your standards.

Robert Gaines / 25 Mar 2011 / 3:45 pm / Reply
- I would recommend at least seven foot ceilings for the final room. To do that you'll want to make sure your unfinished ceilings have enough room for the ducting (1 foot)) and the exhaust fan (1.5 feet) overhead. In my case my ceilings would have gone below seven feet if I tried to fit the exhaust fan overhead, which is one of the reason I located the exhaust fan outside of the room. That saved me a half a foot by only making me have to fit the ducting overhead. I didn't have any web sites in particular that guided me. I corresponded with people on cigar message boards and also talked to local HVAC specialists to assist me in coming up with the room design. For the specific items and materials, I found a couple HVAC shops that sell to local contractors and also a sheet metal shop to make anything I needed specialty.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 28 Mar 2011 / 12:21 am / Reply
- Thanks for the tips. The recommended height was what I figured. As for the supplies, I've found more and more that I avoid HD/Lowes. My wife and I just bought in Wyckoff NJ and the inspector told me that the only thing you should ever buy from there is nails. Another interesting tidbit. I tend to buy the better brand tools (Bosch/Porter Cable/Dewalt) but he said that these companies have separate divisions for these store sold tools and that they have yet another if you went to an actual tool supplier? I have yet to confirm this however, being that the inspection was just this past weekend. One last thing. I probably won't need to build this because yes.....wait....having no previous knowledge of this, but there is a cigar store with a lounge 1 1/2 blocks away from my new home! Anyway cheers and best of luck.
  
  Robert Gaines / 11 Apr 2011 / 2:43 pm / Reply
Neat man cave. I'm looking to do something like this in the room above my garage. What I was considering was an ERV. This unit will exchange the temperature of the exhausted air to the fresh intake. The problem is they can get a bit expensive for the higher CFM units. A 200 CFM unit is right at the limit of what I wanted to spend. Do you think 200 is enough? I thought going this route would negate the need to isolate the room from the house's HVAC system. I could simply draw the air out of the room and return fresh air with the benefit of recovering most of the heat/ AC. (They claim to be 80 percent efficient) Another posibility with a unit like this would be to connecting the return to another room in the house; this would create a slight negative pressure in the smoking room which would eliminate the need to make it completely air tight. What say you? Am I way off or does this make sense?

Bob / 15 Feb 2011 / 3:21 am / Reply
- What's the size of your room? That will be the biggest determining factor for what kind of CFM you need. 200 CFM seems low, assuming your room is around the size of mine. My fan is around 1200 CFM. Assuming 10% degradation for each of the two 90 degree turns in my ducting (complete guess on that by the way) and the fact that I usually run my fan around 1/3 power, that's 320 CFM that I realistically am pulling under normal circumstances. Going lower than that could prove to be inadequate. Regarding connecting the unit to another room, I'm not a fan of taking any of your house's air. Aside from the negative pressure you can create, it could also get expensive for your heating and cooling bills.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 15 Feb 2011 / 8:17 pm / Reply
  - The room is not very big. 170 square feet perhaps, but the cielling is following the roof line so this takes a lot of the cubic area out. (It's a finished attic). Maybe I didn't explain how this unit works very well. Even if I take some of the houses air, the unit would actually recover most of the heated or cooled air and return it to the rest of the house. They typically use these as a way to recover energy lost in bathroom ventilation as well as introducing an outside air supply to a house. (improved air quality). I guess if I need to get more CFM I will have to swallow hard and fork over more green rectangles:(
    
    Bob / 16 Feb 2011 / 2:22 am / Reply
    - That would take care of the negative pressure issue it sounds like. For the additional CFM, it sounds like it's a borderline call. You room is in fact smaller than mine, so you may be able to get away with less CFM. If you plan on having a couple people in the room smoking with you occasionally I would recommend going with the higher CFM.
      
      Ryan Deyer / 16 Feb 2011 / 11:46 am / Reply
Hey Ryan what did you use for your air tempering and were can I find it. Thanks

robert / 19 Jan 2011 / 1:12 am / Reply
- I used an inline duct heater from Electro Industries. You can find a link to it from the Required Materials page (http://www.ryandeyer.com/cigar-room/required-materials/).
  
  Ryan Deyer / 19 Jan 2011 / 5:11 pm / Reply
Your tips were exactly what I was looking for. Thank You. May I also ask how this works? "In my room there’s a wall switch you can flip when coming into the room that automatically closes the HVAC ducting and opens the fresh air intake ducting." Thanks again!

Sonny Kim / 15 Dec 2010 / 10:43 pm / Reply
- Sure, I'd be happy to elaborate. The room has a vent like any other room in the house, that comes directly from the HVAC. When i'm not in the room that vent is open. There's a second vent in the room that's closed when I'm not in the room. That's a vent that runs to the outside of the house. When I'm smoking in the room I flip the electrical switches and the automatic duct dampers change which vent is open and which is closed. I want the HVAC vent closed so I'm not exhausting my house's air. I want the fresh air vent to open so I have a source of new air for the room. Hopefully that makes sense.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 17 Dec 2010 / 2:38 am / Reply
Ryan this is a great setup and I am looking to replicate something similar. I had a quick question on the heater. Do you use a blower on the heater or do you allow the air to passively get pulled by your separate exhaust fan?

Deker / 05 Dec 2010 / 9:00 pm / Reply
- I let air get pulled through the heater by the exhaust fan.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 05 Dec 2010 / 9:30 pm / Reply
Ryan, thanks for sharing this information. I've got a bit of down time coming up so I have been pondering finally doing an office, bar, and rec room in the basement. Regarding the AC question, I think a wine cellar and a cigar room share many attributes, therefore I would look at what fully functioning wine cellars have. There are units, similar to the fan, that regulate the temp to 60 degrees.

Doug Alexander / 21 Oct 2010 / 1:30 pm / Reply
- Do you have any links to units you've seen? I'd be curious to look into it more.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 22 Oct 2010 / 5:18 pm / Reply
Ryan, Great job on the cigar room. Definitely inspiring. I am in the process of framing out my own haven and am beginning to struggle with the air intake flow vs. in-line duct heater requirements. The exhaust fan you listed is rated at 1200 cfm whereas the duct heater is rated at 350 cfm. Have you run into any issues with this difference in airflow? I also live in Michigan (GR) and am concerned about the cold winter air chilling the room. How did you calculate the necessary equipment specifications? The total area I will be covering with this is 2400 cf ((23' x 15' room). Do you use any additional heating sources? Any assistance on this is helpful! Kind regards, Edward

Edward R. / 23 Sep 2010 / 6:31 pm / Reply
- The in-line heater keeps up very well in the winter. The thing to keep in mind is that I'm not actually using all 1200 CFM. Even though the fan is rated at that, there's a little degradation from the ducting run and one 90 degree turn, and also I rarely have the variable speed switch turned to more than half power. So I would guess I'm probably realistically only needing to pull between 500-600 CFM in my room under normal conditions. There's a chart on http://www.electromn.com/gen/makeup_air.htm that helps break down what the in-line heater can handle. My EM-WX1025R unit can do a 60 degree temperature increase under 527 CFM. That means I can keep the room at 70 degrees when it's 10 degrees outside. One the rare occasion it goes below 10 degrees outside, I may turn the power on the fan down a bit to let the heater keep up, or I just accept that 60-65 degrees in the room is still pretty comfortable. Your room is a bit larger than mine. Something to keep in mind is that you can step up to one of the more powerful in-line heaters to keep up with the additional CFM's. If you have any follow-up questions just let me know.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 23 Sep 2010 / 9:18 pm / Reply
I'll have to do some research what is available. I was thinking of maybe just putting a portable A\C unit in the room or set it up so it pulled in some cool air from the rest of the basement some how.

Cigar Jack / 20 Sep 2010 / 11:36 pm / Reply
- I usually recommend avoiding drawing air from the rest of the house. It can be costly exhausting the house air and can create a negative pressure in the house.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 20 Sep 2010 / 11:55 pm / Reply
Ryan, Thanks for the great detail on how you built your cigar room. I'm buying a new house with an unfinished basement and looking to do something similar for my office. I know you added something to heat the air during the winter, but I was curious about what it is like during the summer. And what a possible solution might be for that. Summers can be brutal here. I'm still trying to convince the wife that she won't have to worry about the smell of smoke getting throughout the house. Also now that you've had the room for awhile is there anything you would do differently?

Cigar Jack / 20 Sep 2010 / 5:51 pm / Reply
- The summer thing can be tricky depending where you live. In Michigan the summers never get terribly hot. Between that, the room being in the basement (which is naturally cooler) and the fact that the air is moving, it's just fine in the summer for me even on the warm days. If this setup was done in a place where the summers get really hot, it might cause a problem. I suppose an air cooling setup could be implemented just like my heating setup was, but I'm not 100% how that would function or what it would look like. I've pondered that setup for a while just so you know. I've concluded I just don't know enough about cooling systems, but I would be excited if anyone had any suggestions. In regards to the smell of smoke getting anywhere else in the house, I can promise you it won't. If the room is sealed up like mine is, there's only one place the smoke can go and that's outside of the house. I've asked my fiance if she can ever smell smoke anywhere in the house and she can't. The room does such a good job in fact that she can't even smell smoke in the cigar room itself the next day after the O2 purifier has been running. The question about doing anything differently is probably the most common one I get. I can't honestly think of anything major. The setup works amazing. I can't tell you how glad I am that I did it. I get a ton of use out of it and everyone that comes over loves it. Now especially I'm excited more than ever that I did it because Michigan just recently put in place it's smoking ban, so outside of traveling to a cigar bar, this is the only place I can smoke.
  
  Ryan Deyer / 20 Sep 2010 / 6:40 pm / Reply