Cigar Room/Lounge - looking for inspiration

[Riverstyx]

We are moving to a new house soon, and I'm considering converting a room to a cigar lounge.  I've been searching the internet for inspiration but thought this forum would yield better results.  

It's a fairly new house (built in 2012), and I'm considering making it my office/cigar lounge. 

Any pics you'd like to share?  Or advice on creating your own smoking oasis?

[MooseAMuffin]

@MU Mike should post his lounge. It's impressive!

[Fuzz]

If the room is big enough, create a walk in humidor along one wall or a corner.

[dominattorney]

Pm me, I turned my basement into a fairly workable smoke space. Cost roughly 1200 bucks. Couple questions for you, and there's the fact that if I had it all to do again, id have made a few changes. Good luck. 

[PapaDisco]

Can you isolate this room from the rest of the home's heating and cooling air?  Does it have an outside wall that you can add ventilation through?

[stogieluver]

I've posted this many times, but still not too proud to post once again.  Took in a small bedroom in our house.  Added a 140 cfm extra quiet Broan exhaust fan, vented through the attic and out through the soffit, which really does work well in the 12' x 12' room. 

 

[KFBR392]

11 hours ago, dominattorney said:

Pm me, I turned my basement into a fairly workable smoke space. Cost roughly 1200 bucks. Couple questions for you, and there's the fact that if I had it all to do again, id have made a few changes. Good luck. 

Im trying to begin work on the same type of project.  I have an unfinished space in my basement. About 200sqft next to the ac/furnace.  I'll wall off the utilities and can keep air supply separate.  I have access to an outside wall , And outside door for that matter, as we have a walkout basement.  I wondering what to do with regards to new air into the room.  Keep the door to the rest of the basement cracked a bit or get some sort of wall mounted ac/heating unit to bring air in from the outside.  Will need to drywall 3 existing walls (two cement foundation and one studded and insulated to the outside back of house) and build the new wall I mentioned earlier, as well as drywall the ceiling. Any advice is greatly welcomed.  Still in the planning phases.   

[Riverstyx]

11 hours ago, PapaDisco said:

Can you isolate this room from the rest of the home's heating and cooling air?  Does it have an outside wall that you can add ventilation through?

It would take some work to isolate the room, but I'll do what it takes to ensure my wife doesn't smell the smoke in the rest of the house.  It does have an outside wall.

[Riverstyx]

@stogieluver Can you smell it in the rest of the house?  

[dominattorney]

What I did in my home, which was a new build, was attempt to ventilated the basement great room. We have a walk out ranch plan. I used two fantech prioair 6 inline fans installed in existing ductwork in the home. My builder refuses to install them, but we settled on them throwing two 6 inch duct lines in the ceiling. This gives me a total of 900 give or take cfm exhaust from a roughly 750 square foot space. Where I went wrong is choosing too large of a room, but if visit between the two fan openings in the ceilimg I have no issues. 

I highly recommend the fantech prioair 6. For your space you will just need one. They are online fans that are installed directly into the duct work of your home. You need a dedicated duct for this for obvious reasons. Now, depending on how handy you are, you could, and for best results should, install the fan as far from the register as you can. Ideally about a foot out from the exterior wall. This minimizes the noise. If you can't do that, don't worry. My fans are installed 1 foot from the register and the noise is not too bad.  But when picking the room you're going to do this in you need to consider the viability of ventilation. Ie it should be a room where it will be easy to run a duct through the ceiling and to the outside of the house. That means a direct line to outside should run parallel to your floor joists, and obviously you want to know this before you start cutting holes in the ceiling. 

One thing to be careful of before you start. This fan is no joke. It's also not gonna kill you either. But inspect your furnace and hot water heater. We have an enclosed system furnace which can't have the pilot light blown out by the exhaust. The water heater too has an emergency gas shutoilff if the pilot light goes out. I suspect your home will have appliances with these modern features, but you need to be sure of that before you go futzing around with exhaust fans. 

Last but not lease is the return air issue. Some make a big deal of this. In my experience I have not worried about a return air system into my space, but my space is much larger than what you are contemplating, and generally I have just smoked in there by myself. With more smokers added to the equation, I would just crack the sliding basement door. Of coursr, that would mean a lower temperature on the winter, but that's what the heat is for. I also feel as if the hvac system of the house will be more than adequate at providing air flow to the space you are using, provided it is a modern system. I'm no hvac expert, so if this is something you're stuck on id consult a professional. The problem I ran into was finding professionals that understand what it is in talking about or why I would need 450 cfm ventilation for cigar smoke. Trust me, you want to use as much cfm as your duct work and floor space can handle, within reason. One guy posted saying 140 worked for him. Maybe, but my advice is that 250 is the bare minimum for a bedroom space. You want the smoke gone, and gone quick. In my basement, I blow a smoke ring, it lingers, floats slowly upward, and then is sucked right out the side of the house. That is ideal. You want to do this right the first time. My fiance was pissed enough about the holes in the ceiling. She would mot have been happy about a redo, which is only as expected. 

One Last thing In  a small space to watch out for is that if your home hvac system has any cold air return vents in your smoke room, you want to cover them up when you are using the room. Magnetic metal plates over the vent would be fine. That will keep your hvac system from sucking in the cigar smoke and blowing it all over the rest of the house.

 

@Corylax18 helped me pick out the right fans.  He knew what he was talking about. 

 

I'll post some pictures later

[Colt45]

Some great stuff here. I've always been quite fond of member Emil's home lounge:

Here's the original discussion:

 

[PapaDisco]

I've also used the Fantech inline fans on other projects (venting bathrooms, laundries and kitchens) and highly recommend these.  I know it's tempting to use an all-in-one system (Broan, etc.) for ease of installation, but it's not much more work to install ductwork and a Fantech unit.  A big plus is that some of their fans can be wired for high/low output, so if you're getting plenty of performance you can step it down (or up as the case may be), and you can get a variable speed unit of course.  These suckers are quiet (partly because they're in the wall or ceiling).

You guys have some nice projects going on!  Wish I could have a cigar room at home :-( 

[etakmit]

I'll be watching this thread a bit.  I don't think a smoking room is in the cards for this house.  But next one?  Absolutely.  And I always love seeing what people come up with

[stogieluver]

22 hours ago, Riverstyx said:

@stogieluver Can you smell it in the rest of the house?  

I’m told by visitors they can’t smell it when thy come in the house.  I don’t completely close the door to that room while I’m in there smoking so the exhaust fan has a fresh air inlet & I let it run for about an hour after I leave the room when finished smoking.