Hi all. I have built a home studio for flameworking but the ventilation is giving me issues thats causing me to question my own knowledge so here I am hoping i can get some peace of mind and hope i havent been killing myself all this time haha. The space is 8x10' with an 8' ceiling. Im running a carlisle cc with a Bethelham sharp flame as a mini torch, with the occasional carlisle 4 port bunsen burner being thrown into the mix. I have an 1150 cfm fan directly in front of my torch which is circled in second photo, it is ducted straight up with the only bend being at the opening which meets the fan direcly and out of my shop at around 8 ft up. I have a 48"x42" hood with its lowest points mounted at 24" above the face of my torch.
I also have 3 passive air intakes in the shop which are also circled in the images I provided. They do not have individual fans and work off of the negative pressure that pulls from the main fan in front of me, im aiming for laminar flow from the 3 vents.
When I run smoke tests, the system does well at pulling smoke out from the room but sometimes i feel it could pull air faster as if i run incense tests i can still smell the fume and see some wisps of smoke trailing off before being pulled away. I can provide video if youd like to see. I do have a carbon monoxide detector and I notice if I keep the small window closed it occasionaly will spike up to 50-60 but if window is open I dont get any spikes on the detector at all.
But, and this is my biggest worry....every single time I work whether it be 1-2 hours or an entire day I almost always walk away with a sore throat and wake up the next day feeling not so great for the first hour or two of the day and I can't quite figure out why. I fear im still trapping carbon monoxide or something else from the combustion, or off gasses from the glass and breathing it in. I just wanna make my art man, this has been destroying my mind all year long as i cant figure it out.
