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Idea for a highland grow rack

  • #21
So maybe screw in piece of glass for the door, cut two holes, and have them going into the grow area. That's it?
 
  • #22
yeah but how low are you dropping temps.........im growing intermediates and some highlands with no special equipment, i just keep them in my basement and they get 65 degree nights......but that can be much different than keeping the ones that want to drop to 50 at nights happy........it can be interesting dropping it the rest of the way.......

Luckily it's only in the hot summer months that it's an issue, and 58F -59F is the night temp I can hit in those months, lower of course the rest of the year. I wish I had a basement - someday as then I could get so much more room and control.

But - I don't grow any ultra highlanders. For those I would definitely have to come up with a better option for the hottest 4 months of the year.

BTW - great ideas in this thread. Got this one tagged to read up in later times if I ever need ideas.
 
  • #23
Yeah for now it's the warm summer months that have me. The winters are great. The only thing is I'm moving into a apartment soon and need to find a way for year round cooling.
 
  • #24
Jeff Shafer has used a chest freezer as a grow chamber for ultrahighland Nepenthes for years. So has Jeremiah. You replace the top with plexiglass or glass and put the lights over it. Put a remote bulb thermostat inside the freezer to control the temperature with a day/night timer and put the plants on a rack so they are not sitting on the bottom.

The only problem as I see it is you can't easily see or take care of the plants without dealing with the lights.

I agree that if you want to hit ultrahighland temperatures low 50's or below then you need some sort of refrigeration, like a freezer. An a/c unit cooling a whole room also seems rather wasteful and costly for energy use. Better to duct the a/c output directly into the grow chamber and have a humidfier output blowing into that duct before the chamber to rehumidify the air before it exits the duct into the chamber. The a/c and humidifier can be wired to a thermostat and timer inside the grow chamber to keep preset temperatures day/night.
 
  • #25
i have seen Jeremiah's freezer set-up in person a couple years ago(had hoped to make it down there again this summer but it didnt work out).....while i do agree it works pretty slick....as you say it makes dealing with the plants slightly difficult due to the positioning of the lights and does not lend itself to showing them off.....but it does defiantly work......

aint worried about ruining a freezer.......even punching the 4 holes i think i need does not make it unrepairable for setting out in the garage to use to store deer, elk or speed goat meat from hunting seasons, it wont look pretty but it would just sit in the garage anyway.......going to take quite a few side carpet jobs before i get to play with this idea and my partner in it is likely going to have back surgery shortly after hunting season so this is likely a ways away......

Tony, if i was to use an AC unit i would use one specifically to duct into the chamber instead of using a freezer to do so as is being talked about here....i agree its very wastefull to try and drop the temp of the whole room.......

actually curious as to weither my heat sink idea has merit and would work......i kinda want to build it just to see if it will.........course it is the product of a bored mind that has no engineering or real physics training so i do have doubts......but i think the concept has merit........
 
  • #26
I wish I could duct the a/c into the contained growshelf and just cool that. It would save some money (luckily electricity is cheap here though) and it would probably even drop the temp down. I've measured the air coming out of the a/c at 52F. But my one problem is this: Id have to control it with a thermostat set inside the chamber. Unfortunately, when power is interupted to this a/c unit, it defaults to a temp of 75F. I set what temp I want on the a/c, and it cycles off and on to maintain it. To control it from an outside source, ie from a thermostat inside the chamber, would cause is set itself to 75f the next time it came on. So unless the temp of the air at the unit itself was above 75, it wouldn't cool the air despite the temp of the thermostat inside the chamber.

SO - moral of the story for any of you that might be considering using ducted a/c air: Make sure that it doesn't default/reset itself upon power interruption. I know there are units out there that don't reset themselves (I cannnot remember what this feature is called) so you can set it to the lowest temp. This would cause it to actually cool the air with power supplied. You will pay more for them. Or, maybe there are units that are simply on or off, with no temp control. That would work well also for an external thermostat to control it. I originally bought this unit many years ago before deciding to put it to work for this purpose, so for now it makes do.
 
  • #27
Tony that is why I want to build something on top of a chest freezer so I can easily see and care for the plants like a normal grow chamber with the freezer on the bottom. If it is insulated enough I don't think there would be a problem.

I have my ideas and will build what I had planned and see how it goes. What is the worst that can happen? The freezer give out? Then I will just have to replace it. I will use the water bottle Idea though that makes perfect sense. Because I want something that is easy to tend to the plants and looks good too.
 
  • #28
Yeah I was thinking that an a/c won't get the temps down enough for what I'm trying to do. So I have a freezer not being used so I'm trying it out. Would I need a thermostat or just let it do what it does? Where would I get one from?
 
  • #29
That is another reason why I want to build the chamber above the freezer so I can let the freezer stay on and just pump cold air out when needed with fans. You can use a regular thermostat and power source to power the fans controlled by the thermostat. You will need to follow directions of the thermostat for proper wiring. You will need a little understanding of wiring to get all this figured out but it really is not too hard. I do not draw well and don't have time drawing you a diagram for wiring so if someone else could then that would be great. I don't know how those folks who grow in the freezer keep the temps right. You would have to ask someone who has done that. So my suggestion is to use the setup in the picture I posted. You would just have to figure out how to wire it all together because I think the freezer should stay on to keep the cold temps in side it and ready to be used when needed.
 
  • #30
Or maybe have it turn on a couple hours before the lights go off. Would that blow it out if it's turned on and off everynight? Maybe have the fan inside the freezer on a timer so that when the lights go off the fan starts to blow the cold air in?
 
  • #31
that is an idea, but how would you keep it cool through the day? That is where a thermostat would come in handy and then you could set another to come on with a timer to cool it down further at night. As you can see you can go as simple or as complex as you want. The timer on a fan is not a bad idea, but it would not have that great of temp regulation during the night. You could actually get it too cold then if you think about it. A freezer when up and running gets down bellow freezing, and if you insulate your chamber well enough you could get it colder than freezing and that is even a little too cold for villosa.

So in reality it gets down to the fact of how complex do you want to take it. You can go as complex or as crude as you want. You have to decide.
 
  • #32
I'm just not sure how to do the whole thermostat thing. I mean do I get it from say home depot or places like that?
 
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