So I got a bit carried away building a greenhouse and, since I went through all the trouble, I thought I should share it with this community. Maybe someone will find this valuable. Before I get into it, though I want to give a huge shoutout to all the folks on here who shared their knowledge. Special thanks goes to Blue Helix whose greenhouse was really the basis for this project. Almost all the credit goes to him and others who've contributed on this forum.
So let's get right to it:
Basically, it's a wire shelf wrapped in multi-purpose plastic with an ultrasonic humidifier pumping in the humidity and some fans for air circulation and exhaust. The lighting is RGB LED strip lighting.
The humidifier is plumbed into PVC piping which runs along the back above each shelf. The pipe has 1/4" holes drilled at regular intervals to direct the flow of the atomized water into the greenhouse.
The humidifier is controlled by a Dwyer HS series humidity switch (thanks Blue Helix!), wired to a 110v outlet where the humidifier is plugged in The switch turns on and off the humifider to keep the relative humidity at the set level. The humidity inside the greenhouse is detected by a Dwyer RHP series Dwyer 657-1 4-20mA probe. (A note on this - BH has suggested a different probe but that one wasn't working for me at humidities above 90%RH so I switched to this one which I find works much better). [Edit: After some more experience, I had to change the probe again. It turns out that most of the "cheaper" probes really do not work at or above 90%RH. The Dwyer RHP probe would cut out or give an error above 90%. I eventually invested int he much more expensive Dwyer 657 probe which works very well all the way up to 99%RH. The reality seems to be that if you want a probe that will function well at the higher humidity, you need to spend some money...]
I've got two sets of fans going in here. There is one fairly powerful exhaust fan in the corner which runs infrequently. It serves to exhaust C02-laden air and pull in fresh air from outside the GH. Underneath each shelf are small CPU fans that run constantly. They serve to keep the air inside constantly stirring - partially to move CO2 away from the grow trays and also to keep the moisture evenly distributed.
A note about this: because the exhaust fan is what is doing the FAE work, there is no need to have slits or holes or openings in the plastic. There are plenty of small cracks in the plastic through the door and where the wiring runs in for example, or along the bottom. The exhaust fan will pull air in through those small openings. This way I can keep the GH sealed up, and keep the humidity in.
Now the one innovation that I think I can take credit for is using these little wifi controllers to control the fans and lights. These little guys are like $15 online and are designed to control LED strip lighting. But the nice thing about them is that fundamentally all they really do is control a few 12v circuits - one for each of the colours 'red' 'green' and 'blue' that would make up the RBG LEDs. So you can repurpose them to control anything that runs off 12v. It just so happens that most CPU fans run on 12v.
In this case, I have the main exhaust fan hooked up to the 'Blue' circuit, and the internal fans hooked up to the 'Green' circuit. These little controllers use my home wifi network to an app running on a mobile phone. The apps sets the 'colour' and 'brightness', which in this case is actually controlling the fan speeds by simply adjusting the voltage running through the circuit. The app also has some functions like timers and the like. What I've done is set up a cycle so that, for fruiting conditions, the exhaust fan turns on twice in a 16-colour cycle which ends up being 45 seconds every 12 minutes (there is nothing special about those times, it's just what I found worked for me).
The lights are your usual waterproof 5050 RGB LED strips. They are also hooked up to one of these wifi controllers and I have them set on a 6500k colour temperature and a 12 hour on, 12 hours off timer. I know there has been some debate about LED lights on this forum with some very experienced growers frowning on their use. But I don't know. They seem to work fine for me.
As for temperature, I have an oil-filled electric heater that I got second hand for like $20 which is plugged into one of these cheapo AC thermostat controllers. It's great because I also use this room for my agar plates, grain spawn, and bulk spawn run work so the heater works to keep all of that up to the right temp.
In going through this process I learned a few things about greenhouses:
-First, they don't have to be expensive. I pulled this together with some second-hand stuff and some freebies from my hack space, etc. the most costly things were the Dwyer humidity switch and probe which were just over $100 between them. It definitely costs more than running monotubs but it wasn't outraegous. I didn't track my costs so I can't really say exactly how much. Well I'm going to revise that - the humidity probe I ended up with was definitely not cheap. There are ways to avoid that - for example, you could just fiddle with the timing and power of the humidifer to get about the right humidity rather than relying on a probe an elctronic switch to get it just right. But in this case, I wanted to really get it dialed, so I spend the cash on the good humidity probe. The nice thing about this is that it is super efficient with the water - it can keep the humidity above 90% and only need refilling once per 3 or 4 days.
-It was a bunch of work to build and get it dialed in. There was quite a bit of soldering work to do the wiring, for one thing. For me, this was a fun project. If you're not into making things with your hands, don't bother.
Why bother going through all this? A few reasons:
-Space efficiency. If I really cram the trays in there, I can fit 12 13"x9" trays which is about the surface area equivalent of 5 monotubs. I'm pretty sure I'd need a more serious shelving and lighting set up for that many tubs.
-Fine-tuning. With this, I can really dial in the FAE and humidity levels. This gives me the ability to really experiment to see what are the optimal grow conditions for different varieties and species.
-Set and forget: with this setup I can really just set things up and not think about it for several days until the humidifier tank needs refilling. It is pretty much entirely automated.
-Panaeolus. This was truly the inspiration for this project. I'd been growing cubes in tubs for a few years but wanted to get my pan grown on. From everything I read, they need more FAE than is possible in a tub - though I could be proven wrong. I'm still working on this - I have a couple of grow bags colonizing right now and I'll update if I have success.
-Fun! I like projects like this so it was a fun challenge. I'm glad it all came together.
Here are a few grow pics:
If you're wondering, 'who is this guy'? Yes, this is my first post under this account. I've actually been a member here for a few years under a different account, mostly lurking. Recently, though, I starting thinking that maybe I have something more to contribute to this community but decided to start from scratch for security reasons before I started sharing too much. So this is the new me.
Edited by Teonanautical (12/23/18 12:02 AM)
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