Planning Your
Perfect Cigar Room
It’s every cigar enthusiast’s dream—a room at home where you can enjoy the pleasures of the hobby without worrying about residual aromas or smoking up the house. As you might expect, there are a lot of logistics to consider to make it happen, first and foremost being an HVAC setup that can handle the job.
What kinds of HVAC systems work best for a cigar room?
Assuming the cigar room is a place to smoke and not store cigars, the best option is a ventilation system that exhausts the smoke while in use and replaces it with outside air. Called a DOAS (dedicated outside air system), this unit is a great solution in terms of performance, but Is expensive and often a challenge to install. Because the outdoor air is seldom ideal for indoor comfort, the ventilation equipment is specially designed to handle the extremes of seasonal temperatures and humidity, which leads to a premium price tag.
A more cost-effective solution would be a combination of exhaust, fresh outside air, and filtration capable of handling smoke particulate. With this kind of system, you can expect the room to get a bit smokey while in use, but to recover with fresh air and time. The good news is, like with a DOAS, the room maintains negative pressure relative to the rest of the building so no smoke would leave the cigar room, keeping the house smoke- and odor-free. There is a bit of added maintenance, however. The filters become loaded with smoke and tar, requiring frequent cleaning or replacement.
How much space is usually needed for a separate cigar room HVAC system?
It really depends on the size of the room and expectations of performance. A DOAS is usually a self-contained outdoor unit that requires running ducting to and from the room. You can expect to use approximately a 10’x10′ area outside for the unit, which then connects to the necessary duct pathways inside the home. This unit also require quite a bit of electricity and fossil fuel to have the capacity to cool and dehumidify or heat the outdoor air in all environmental conditions.
A non-DOAS system also requires space for hardware, though not as much. An 8’x 8′ room plus pathways for exhaust and fresh air ducts will usually suffice. However, the system size is ultimately determined by the size of the cigar room.
When building a cigar room, at what point in the construction process should homeowner’s contact an HVAC professional?
Getting an HVAC professional to help with the plans should be the first thing you do, even before talking to an architect or designer. They can determine whether there’s enough space for HVAC hardware and where the ventilation pathways should be placed. Otherwise, you might design a room and layout you love, only to find out the equipment you need won’t fit or work within your parameters.