Ventilation is a necessity for sure. You don't want to use the house system to take care of that, home systems are usually sealed and balanced for pressures and such and cutting into them can cause some weird effects on heating/cooling the rest of the house. Not to mention putting bud stinking air back into the system that is taking care of the rest of the home.

You can find an exhaust fan and carbon filter combination for under $300 that would be more than sufficient for your space and it would control smell for you. If you keep a negative pressure in your growspace and the exhaust is cleaned by a carbon filter, you can effectively eliminate the smells outside the space. You will be shocked at how much a single flowering plant can smell.

Best of luck, there's a lot of fellow texas growers on here to help you out. You'll never be alone here.

Just my :twocents: