I had to move my operation indoors (too cold in Chicago!) and I’m roasting in my basement utility room. I tapped into an existing bathroom vent which I also turn on when roasting. It’s not intense but I do still smell it after. Can you check out my setup and LMK if there’s anything else I might want to be doing?
Just speculation. Do you have a source for make-up-air? If you move air out of the basement there needs to be an unrestricted source for air to replace what’s pumped out. If you don’t provide that, the exhaust fan will get the air from wherever it can. That may be creating the right set of conditions to move some of the roast exhaust where you don’t want it.
Bruce
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Three sources of smoke/smell: roaster exhaust, cooling tray, residual out of faceplate (door, tryer, loading chute). Each one will have to be accounted for to reduce smell. Looks like exhaust is taken care of, if you can tie in the cooling tray that would probably be your next largest source. If you can do a general area ventilation that could help with the residual stuff.
I have my exhaust and cooling tray tied into a vent system on my cart which goes outside. Noticed that I was still getting smell in my roasting area so I added a small fan, venting outside. It helped.
Doubt you will be able to get rid of 100% of the smell but helps keep it down to an acceptable level.
Do you think this vent run could be too long? I’m having actual smoke fill up the room. Using this fan: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M7S46YZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Granted, it’s a small utility room and when I shut the door, it didn’t permeate throughout the house but it was still smokier than I’d wanted in that room. Thoughts?
Hello fellow Chicagoan. What I do is have a 6" fan with flexi tube stuff on each end. I hang the tube above the exhaust on the bullet, but it’s not attached. I have zero smell after roasting. The fan really does a good job!
I can’t tell from your recent picture where you have the fan. At just under 200 CFM it may be barely enough. And as Bruce pointed out in his earlier post, you need to make sure there is make-up air into the room to replace the air that is being pulled out. If it is very smoky in that room with the door shut then either the fan is not powerful enough or you’re not getting enough make up air to allow the fan to efficiently move the smoke out.
I roast under a vent hood that is over my stove and I have make-up air into my house from a “fan in a can” in the basement that will pull in fresh air. I live in New England. I don’t get much smoke upstairs as a result or during roasting in the kitchen, but the smell will still linger for a little while. No different than when searing some scallops on a cast iron pan 
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See if you can tell at what point during the roast the room fills up with smoke. In my case, roasting under a range hood, smoke is well contained during the roast, but sometimes escapes into the room after dumping the beans into the cooling pan. There is a surprising amount of smoke at that point, and it is exhausted through the cooling tray fan below the roaster. The range hood doesn’t contain that smoke well, especially for larger, darker roasts. Thanks to @blacklabs for pointing this one out.
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A reason why I run a semi-ridge duct from the cooling fan tray up toward my range vent hood
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