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Home: Pet: Cat: Hygiene
cat box exhaust fan   (+3)  [vote for, against]
Get the smell out of the house.

Get an AC-powered computer fan, some of that plastic flexible duct that says "NOT for dryer exhausts", and duct-tape them up to one of those rolling cat boxes. Then you just cut a hole in the side of the house or rig something in a window, and suck those smells away.

When the cat uses the box, the fan speeds up like an overloaded vacuum cleaner.
-- blitzberg, Jan 09 2003

LitterFree http://www.litterfree.com/
Self cleaning litter box, flushes contents to toilet or laundry drain [Boots, Oct 04 2004]

<Insert-8th-of-7's-standard-anti-cat-rant-here>

Ahhh, that's better. Haven't done that for while. First of 2003 too !

Welcome, [blitzberg].
-- 8th of 7, Jan 09 2003


I believe UnaBubba has the deluxe version.
-- po, Jan 09 2003


Hm. Unlike human toilets, where the waste is flushed away, the cat box retains its stinky contents long after the cat has gone. Will the fan keep whirring away all that time?

Or perhaps you could crank up the fan to top speed, and blow the cat box contents onto your neighbor's lawn?
-- DrCurry, Jan 09 2003


Not a bad idea, however I want the LitterFree system. You only need to replace litter a couple times a year and the system cleans and dries the rocks while flushing the nasty away.
-- Boots, Jan 09 2003


A yes, kitty litter. If changed regularly, does it not work to neutralize odors?
-- snarfyguy, Jan 09 2003


I built a small rabbit-hutch like structure with side cat-entrance door and hinged lid for human access. The litter tray is in this, outside the house and protected from the elements. Plastic liners make changing the litter a doddle.

I've found most litters do actually work at neutralising niffs, but they need some time to, I don't know, suck the surface moisture out of the stuff or something. Personally I'm not prepared to wait.
-- egbert, Jan 10 2003


Or the litter box could be conveniently placed near an open window and have a built in catapult which would fling the cat’s business into the neighbour’s garden after it had finished.
-- talen, Jan 10 2003


No. But I could always make the catapult I could always make the catapult really, really, really big, or have it loaded into mini ICBMs.
-- talen, Jan 10 2003


[Insert expletive here] I’ll change that mistake post-haste. But you get the idea anyway.
-- talen, Jan 10 2003


You can get hermetically sealed cat litter trays with a plastic cat flap at the front that sealed with rubber after the kity and a pad in the roof that sucks up pooey odours.I sold these in a shop where i worked and even bought one for my cat, unfortunately she was to scared to go in. Maybe i can find another use for it?
-- squeak, Jan 10 2003


//hermetically sealed cat litter trays with a plastic cat flap at the front that sealed with rubber after the kity and a pad in the roof that sucks up pooey odours// what cat in its right mind would use that?
-- po, Jan 10 2003


How about getting a dog instead?
-- just4kinks, May 27 2004


Well, for a dog, you'd need a bigger fan.
-- bristolz, May 27 2004


Besides, the word dogapult is not as much fun.
-- normzone, May 27 2004


This could be done very easily with a dryer window vent kit. Some people don't have a good spot to put the litter box in and are stuck with the smell. A device like this should help them deal with it.
-- ftzdomino, Nov 09 2004


The litterbox as it is vents into the house. In hot or cold weather when the house is closed this is not ideal. The fan proposed here sounds good but either vents a lot of conditioned inside air to the outside (wasteful) or must be rigged to turn on and off by the cat, which might scare the cat away from the litterbox.

I have just installed a similar device. Instead of a computer fan I used an aquarium bubbler with the bubbler inside the domelike top of the litter box. The bubbler ($10) is ideal because air output is low and steady but adequate to ventilate, and air output is already thru an included long thin hose which can be snaked away to the outside.

As set up, the electrical cord and the output hose snakes out thru the vent in the top of the box with the remainder of the vent sealed with duct tape. The output hose goes thru a hole I drilled in the windowsill. The thing stays on.

I was worried the new humming occupant of the litterbox might be offputting to the cat, who would then establish an ad hoc litterbox elsewhere. But so far so good.
-- bungston, Nov 11 2015


I wonder if one of those ozone generators would do any good. I'm reasonably not completely pissed off at the arrangement I have : the box is next to the furnace: during the summer they go outside and the windows are open anyways, and during the winter, the furnace draws the air in for combustion - it goes out the chimney.
-- FlyingToaster, Nov 12 2015



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