So I am looking to close on a house on the 29th of this month and I negotiated with the fiance that I get the garage. She gets everywhere else but the garage is mine. I have been given the go ahead as well to smoke in the garage. Her only concern is with the cigar smoke/smell getting into the house. So now I have to decide how to prevent this.

I have been tossing around the idea of a ventilation fan (like you find the bathroom) in the ceiling. I am not sure how well this would work and then I am a bit concerned about the noise that goes along with it.

My second idea was an air purifier. I have little to no knowledge about them and have no idea what to even look for. Does anyone have any suggestions??

I would mainly be smoking in the garage in the winter when it is a bit chilly outside.
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I smoked in the garage this winter with the garage door cracked open a few feet for vintelation and a heater beside me. It was pretty comfortable for an Indiana winter.
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You want a ventilation fan that pulls air out of the garage. You want to keep the pressure in the garage lower than the house or smoke will migrate in. You could add a purifier if you want.
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Moving the air out of the garage is your primary followed by the purifier after. How it would work is the exhaust is step one and then once it's off the purifier starts. Have this function work with the garage door opener. Exhaust will blast for 5-10 minutes then the air purifier (often just an ozone generator) will go for another 5-10 minutes.

Go for more an industrial exhaust than the bathroom kind. Paint the garage in something that retards smells and/or lightly washable.
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You want to go with ventilation, a filter won't keep up. To size the fan you need to determine the flow you need in cfm cubic feet per minute. Measure the volume of the room and determine how many air changes per hour you need. I am sure here is an ASHRAE standard out there for air changes per hour for smoking rooms but I can't get anything to load on my ipad. Volume * air changes / 60 gets you cfm.

Then you should determine the static pressure drop of the duct you are using. There are calculators online for this. You cfm and static pressure drop in inches of water are used to size your fan.

I'd you just buy a bathroom fan based on stated cfm it is probably at 0" of pressure to make it sound the best which isn't possible in the field. If you just go off that rating you will get less flow but it is hard to determine how much.

Sound is going to be in sones or dBA at a certain number of feet away from the unit. You can find charts online that relate the sones or dBA to known reference points so you can visualize (audioize?).

If you need any help figuring flow, pressure or selecting the fan let me know assuming you aren't going to be using your garage as a commercial space and need a PE stamp in Oklahoma or something crazy like that. In that case I will still help but will require a PO.
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