I want to make my existing space work for me. I have 700sq feet that is now split into two 350sq foot rooms. One of those rooms I would love to have a clean room ISO7 or 8. Am I over simplifying a brand new mylar grow tent 10x5 to be a good starting point. Then center of that two 6inch intake fans bringing air in from above into a DIY flow hood with a good air filter blowing down onto a stainless steel table.
And then on the floor two more 6inch fans exhausting all the air out.
I assume most packaging isn’t being done in clean rooms but I’d like to start setting precedent on cleanliness for doing any packaging be it flower or edibles.
I think having an ISO 7/8 room for <$1,000 is completely unrealistic. Here’s some modular cleanrooms that can be set up, a 6x6 clean room from them starts around $5-6k
I would recommend looking into the SOP’s that one needs for cGMP compliance for supplements for a starting point on running a clean operation.
I just looked at the requirements of a iso7 room, and if you had an inline hepa filter on an intake fan, wouldn’t that meet the requirements of a iso7 rooms particulate count?
Genuinely curious as to why you say it’s unrealistic, as those clean rooms look like frames with plastic draped on them, and plastic strips for entry ways.
Edit: to be clear, I do not doubt your statement, I hope I’m not coming off as negative.
IIRC ISO 7/8 simply refers to the amount and size of particulates allowable in the space. This can be accomplished with adequate HEPA filtering and HVAC design. At the 7/8 level the need for an ISO 8 anteroom is application specific and has more to do with the cleanliness of the unclassified area leading to the clean room and the risk of contaminants entering the space. Regardless, you do need an anteroom for prep it just might not have to be ISO rated. The building materials and whatnot are only required inasmuch as they facilitate the level of cleanliness. As long as your space meets the particulate and air exchange goals of the ISO rating, its good.
Now to take it a step further for things like cGMP, you have additional requirements like condition (temp pressure humidity) monitoring and workflow design, etc
IIRC if you just want ISO, then it’s just a clean air thing, but if you have aspirations of something like GMP compliance it becomes more complicated.
They probably can but you’re going to have to go through the process of building and certifying that the prototype room you designed maintains cleanliness and that costs money.
The reason rooms use expensive materials is because they’re guaranteed to check all the boxes necessary for a clean space. If your operation depends on compliance, it is expensive to take risks with cheaper unproven building materials.
However, if this is just to satisfy your own company needs and you don’t have to worry about getting shut down over a non clean clean room, then I think definitely you could play around with some different materials and find something that would work “good enough” which is still pretty damn good.
Hell, I just built a mushroom innoculation lab with regular plastic vapor barrier over studs and a contractor grade HEPA dust filtering unit with some flexible ducting. Is it compliant? Hell no. Does it virtually eliminate the amount of contaminated mushroom substrate we produce? Yes it does.
Edit: IDK about sub-$1k unless you get a really good deal on your filtering solution. The contractor HEPA unit I mentioned previously was $1k alone. You’re looking at $500+ easily just for a filter not to mention fans of adequate size push through the filter.
A couple thousand is totally realistic tho depending on your goals.
For example could you use McMaster-Carr and McMaster-Carr that will give you good air flow, 2 6 inch sized holes in your room. Seal with caulking and some airtight material.<100$ cost you’d have to calculate how many times that replaces the air but I think it satisfies the general idea.
I get what you mean about compliance but if its just for a “clean room” not a Clean Room than it will keep the air clean. I expect having employees wearing the clean suits helps.
Let me ask this, do you have a particular goal in mind other than wanting a “clean space”? For example, our goal with the janky lab build was to decrease our contamination rates and it did that job perfectly even though it was janky.
Those filters you linked would be “better” than nothing but their pore size is so big (3 microns) that you’re not catching a whole lot other than dust. I think you have to go down to like 0.2 micron to adequately capture things like mold spores and other biological contaminants.
If you’re not having contamination or cleanliness issues that you need to fix, then from an operational perspective do you even need a “clean space” other than to look good to outsiders? Honestly, 90% of cleanliness issues can be covered by good employee procedures before you start modifying rooms with filters and such.
If you’re doing it to look good to outsiders (a perfectly valid reason, not hating) then you need to be prepared to explain HOW your cleanliness goals are met, because most uninformed outsiders are only going to be interested in the industry certifications they trust, which means an expensive compliant room.
I am just slapping things together our of curiousity but this McMaster-Carr although it looks ugly/odd will get you down to 0.3microns without breaking the bank.
I guess my core question is, why does it take thousands of dollars to do? I understand if you are buying idiot proof tested products which can do it. Even then thousands seems a bit much. What part is costing so much? Fans and filters are cheap.
The clean room industry is inexorably tied to the medical and pharma industries, both of which have deep deep pockets and can’t afford to NOT have compliant spaces so they pay.
A lot of expensive testing goes into verifying that a filter is actually able to filter what it says it does. That’s what goes into a $500+ HEPA filter. It also requires expensive materials.
Theres an old story that goes something like: A company’s machine is down and theyre losing money and don’t know how to fix it. They call in the master mechanic and he spends 15 minutes looking at it, turning one dial and the machine pops back to life. The company owners are happy and grateful until they get a bill for $10k. They yell at him “how could this be $10k? You only turned a dial and worked 15 minutes?!” He responds “you’re paying $100 for me to turn the dial and $9900 for the 15 years of experience I needed to learn exactly which dial to turn”
I butchered it but it’s true, the guys who do this know the codes intimately and can build you a totally compliant room in a month because they know exactly what they need to meet your cleanliness goals. You can get by with cheaper materials, but the reality is that you don’t know if it’ll work until you do it and you might have to redo it a couple times.
My goal is to limit all possible contaminants dust mainly. The building it’s in is not used for anything other than offices and a restaurant on the main floor.
The method I’m going to go with is create a 11’x7’ room out of 2x4 frame outside wall sealed with just drywall. Inside wall finished with acrylic panels or whatever non porous materials I can find. That alone I ran at 500ish but could be higher with lumber prices going up.
Inside that room will be the 10x5 tent.
I’ve seen laminar flow hoods made with plastic totes some sealing and a cutout for a merv 17 air filter which can be found 6 for 70 bucks we use them at home. The tents some are 80 inches tall so it would be a feasible work space for two employees to sit and work.
I’m sure most carts are being filled in a normal warehouse space, environment controlled visually.
Packaging gummies making pre rolls packaging flower being primary use. Want to have homoginizer and all equipment I use stored in that larger room.
Again none of this is for compliance, more for establishing precedent for my company should we expand to do anything larger than white label services.
If anyone knows this,
Manufacturing my own gummies, would using a commercial kitchen which we rent here and there suffice safety Manufacturing wise? Our commercial kitchen certifies and meets FDA guidelines as well as state regulations on edible end products.
However since cannabinoids are still not GRAS its not something we have them do but we take all certificates and save them.
I’ve done a DIY cleanroom before but inherently a DIY cleanroom is likely not going to be compliant. Looking at ISO7 you would need a hard walled structure, and this is not achievable with <1k. If your goal is to make a clean room that works for less than 1K than that is possible, just do not expect it to pass any audits.
For our cleanroom we made the frame from PVC, reinforced with a scaffold made of super struts. We then lined the inside with clear vinyl and used duct tape to attach the vinyl to the frame without piecing it. The floor was also covered in vinyl since operators were always wearing booties inside.
Outside the main doorway we made a “grey” room where operators would put on booties and bunny suits. This was basically the same design as the clean room just on a smaller scale. We had a sealed door between the grey room and the clean room that acted as an airlock. We would step into they grey room and close the outer door, sealed will Velcro and a rubber gasket (this would work well with a zipper). Once the outer door was closed we could open the door to the clean room and the grey room would “inflate” we would then pass through and close the door. This did a good job of keeping contamination low, positive pressure is one of the most important design aspects.
For air flow we used HVAC systems that were built into the room we were building the clean room in, we ducted into the room and added a bunch of HEPA filters in the duct to give us the best shot at keeping contamination low. For the outflow fans we used bathroom exhaust fans that we used silicone to mount into ductwork that we passed through the side of the clean room with a one way vent on the outside portion. This worked relatively well.
Finally a good clean before we started processing. We did a ethanol solution on all the walls floors and ceilings and then a soap and water washdown.
Even a single filter will blow half your budget practically. Also, I thought iso7 had a laminarity requirement. You could probably do it for about twice that, the fan for the ACH rate is probably the largest cost.
What we did for our clean rooms was as follows:
Sheetrock walls, cove base at the bottom and sealed with silicone. Then in front of it, we used sheet metal spaced off the wall with steel stud track, hanging down from a bar mounted around the top edge of the wall. Sheetmetal comes about 12" shy of the floor and the top of the cavity is capped by more stud track. Takeoff boots on the stud track feed the blower intake through a prefilter rack. Tee off the intake goes to another rack/damper for makeup air. Keep the rooms narrow and you won’t need a floor assembly
What do you think of these things? Useful or nahhh again I’m not needing any certification and not regulated. Simply want to establish cleanliness. Would this
On top of a stainless steel prep table, (if this is asinine of me be gentle) would be taller than the tent. So I would cutout the needed tent from the roof to allow the top of the unit to be outside the tent sealing it up with adhesive of whatever grade needed and finished with duct tape. That’s around 900. The entire space inside that laminar flow hood would be pretty clean?
I guess my question, and maybe I missed the answer already, is what are you trying to do with you clean space? Plating? Sterile compounding? Tissue culture? Or do you just want a clean production space for filling cartridges or something?
The number one rule with clean rooms is don’t build one if you don’t need to
Package flower into eights, package gummies into jars, cartridges if D8 doesn’t get the hammer.
Basically packaging but want to ensure smells aren’t freely flowing throughout entire building as I share the building with an architect firm and two real estate agents.
Guess could add making pre rolls as I do that 4 times a year but for a day only. So cleanup of debri and shit would not be an issue.
Okay yeah you don’t need/want a clean room. For starters, they’re generally positive pressure so they’re going to push the odors out of every pinhole.
What you need is a cleanable surface, something to cover your work surface to prevent material from falling on/in it, and a negative pressure vent to pull through some sort of odor eliminating mechanism (carbon filtration or ozone/UV).
That good maybe could be modified to add a carbon filter but frankly it’s going to be loud and relatively expensive for what you need. I’d start with a stainless table, FRP backsplash, and replace your drop ceiling with some wipedown tiles. Caulk them in with some painters caulk and clean everything. Replace or cover any carpet with something less linty. Find a small squirrel cage blower and run it through one of these:
Spend the other $500 of your $1000 budget on airtight food grade containers for your stock and you’ll have achieved your goals much more effectively and efficiently.
Edit for smell control: you can make your space negative pressure to keep the odors inside by ducting a small amount of the air from the blower out of the space. Obviously you’ll need to send the stank somewhere that it’s not a problem, so it makes sense for it to be post-filter. The issue is you will be pulling air in from the rest of the building, which if it’s dirty/dusty can be a problem but if you take precautions to keep dust off the work surface can be worth the trade-off