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OfflineShikamaru
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Starting a School Mushroom Farm * 1
    #26691082 - 05/23/20 07:38 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Hi Shroomerites!
                A very exciting opportunity has arisen where I have been given 2 rooms inside of an existing school to create a mushroom farm.
I thought it would be a good idea to document progress here as well as gather ideas from any lovely souls who are able to. 
I am relatively new to growing so any advice/guidance given is greatly appreciated :heart: The CEO of the school has given me 100% control over the entirety of the project. 
He has told me to make a list of supplies needed and he would get funding from grants,etc. through the school itself or he will come out of pocket to pay.

                The two rooms are currently used as storage rooms. The rooms are approximately 300 sq. ft each, I will update with exact measurement after I take them.
The two rooms are connected by a bathroom area.  I have taken pictures of the two rooms below.


Room 1




Room 2




Room 3?

   
                  The second room hasn't been touched and the pics for room 1 are after a partial cleanup. 
The floor is tile and the walls/ceiling seem to be plaster.  There are some windows and some dressers/shelves made out of wood that I might tear down.
The 3rd room is a question mark because I may have access to make this into a dedicated lab.  I am pretty sure I will be able to get it for that but it's a question until confirmed.

                  The CEO just gave me the rights to use this space 2 days ago so it's very early and I am still intensely studying everything.
I want to make this a cutting edge program while also keeping things as simple as possible.
Oyster mushrooms are high on the list but I know for sure I want to grow Lion's mane.  I plan to start with maybe two species with one being Lion's mane.

                    I also have access to the garden space outside which I plan to place mushrooms logs. 
I also envision setting up a greenhouse outside for further cultivation but that will be later down the line.

                    As stated above, it is very early so any advice on how to go about it, any lessons learned from growing on scale, general advice/warnings, anything at all is greatly appreciated. 
I will continue to update this as things progress  :rockon:


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #26691088 - 05/23/20 07:42 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

:popcorn:

Edit: This sounds like an amazing opportunity. Is it a charter school that it has a CEO?

I’m sure folks here would love to provide guidance toward instituting a mycology education program.




Edited by ModularMind (05/23/20 07:57 PM)


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OfflineShikamaru
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: ModularMind]
    #26691139 - 05/23/20 08:02 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Hi Modular! It is a charter school and it's located in Chicago.  I'm glad you mentioned the mycology education program because I foresee instituting that for sure once class is back in session.  The school is currently empty due to covid-19 so I have the whole summer to get things up and running for when school returns.


Edited by Shikamaru (05/23/20 08:03 PM)


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InvisibleModularMind
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #26691149 - 05/23/20 08:11 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Nice. I grew up in the burbs out there. Go Cubs Go. W


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: ModularMind]
    #26691238 - 05/23/20 08:53 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

do You have access to water in the rooms? How many lbs of mushroom are you planning on growing a weeK? Are you going to need a cooler to keep the mushrooms in before you sell them? You are at least going to need lab space and an incubation space beside your growing space. But 1st you need to decide what types of mushrooms you will be growing. For instance you will not need nearly as much incubation space to grow oyster as to grow shiitake.


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OfflineShikamaru
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #26691365 - 05/23/20 10:18 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Hey Shroom!
            I do have access to water in both of the rooms. The rooms were used as dorms a long time ago and both rooms have sinks in them. I'm not quite sure, but I would like to grow as much as feasible based on my available space.  I will have access to a commercial refrigerator on the property.  That is a great point regarding incubation space. I could start off making one room an incubation room, or grow mushrooms with low incubation needs. I have yet to finalize what species to grow, but looking into it now.  I do plan to get creative with the shelving. Want to maximize space.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #26691381 - 05/23/20 10:28 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Are you going to requisition funds for a laminar flow hood from the get go?


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OfflineShikamaru
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: ModularMind]
    #26691426 - 05/23/20 10:56 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

I definitely plan to request funds for that.  I want to make that small room a lab and I would have the flow hood in there.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #26691457 - 05/23/20 11:16 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

2x Presto 23Q pressure canner(or better)

Three plate magnetic stirrer.

Media flasks

..........

Gotta start somewhere.


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OfflineShikamaru
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: ModularMind]
    #26691464 - 05/23/20 11:26 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Thanks you for the list of supplies, will be most likely getting all of those.  I love the presto


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #26691590 - 05/24/20 01:50 AM (3 years, 8 months ago)

I am not sure you realize how many mushrooms you could grow in that space. I use a 10' x 4' seen feet high space and I can do 120 lbs a week.

If you plan on growing that much you need to keep an eye out on https://hgrinc.com/ I could have bought an almost new commercial 8 foot flow hood for $600 but it would not fit in my place. It was a $15000 flow hood new. Anyway, you will want to go high-pressure mist for sure. I would buy a cat pump and build it. You will end up with a great pump for cheap.




The cheapest place to get the pump is here...

https://car-wash.kleen-ritecorp.com/search?ts=custom&w=CAT%201CX05

Save all the money you can on the hood and high-pressure mist.
Then use the money you save to buy a batch mixer and autoclave big enough to make your life easy.


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OfflineShikamaru
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #26692050 - 05/24/20 08:12 AM (3 years, 8 months ago)

That is amazing to get that perspective.  Like you said, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how much I could possibly grow but it's looking like quite a lot! 
Thank you so much for the links and the advice regarding the pump and the industrial surplus website. I had no idea about either of them.I will most likely go with your suggestion for the build.
Going to scour the website link as well :smile:

Will take your suggestion in putting most resources towards the batch mixer and autoclave.  Would you suggest trying to build or buy these?


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #26692448 - 05/24/20 11:16 AM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Some things to remember oyster mushrooms are easy to grow and take less space but will need to be sold quickly because they do not have a long shelf life. Shiitake takes more space because of incubation time but can be shipped in refrigerated trucks and have a longer shelf life.

HGR has flow hoods every once in a while but you have to keep looking and Keep in mind the one I was going to buy was listed as an exhaust hood even though it was obviously a flow hood and had a sticker on the side that said laminar flow hood. The people at HGR do not know what they have half the time but I have always gotten killer deals from them.

I was going to suggest my build for high-pressure mist from a pressure washer but you are going to big. I would just pay for the cat pump and be done. I am designing a kit so people will just use a water hose to hook up to my high-pressure misting system. I have proved out the system over 2 years now so I am confident in selling a kit. I would use the low water pressure switch I have designed on my tek though. It can be built for cheap and does the same thing as the low-pressure switches for the normal mist pumps but they cost like $300 mine can be built for about $30 and works perfectly.

I also have a build on a low-pressure drum steamer but they take a long time. They can be used if you need to save money. You will just need to build a few because you are going to need a lot of bags sterilized.

If you want a real autoclave you need to buy one and they are expensive. Remember if something goes wrong you are dealing with a bomb. I would not try to build one and I used to make 40000 ground salutes a year for the 4th of July. Believe me it was dangerous but nowhere near as dangerous as something of that size blowing up!!

As far as a batch mixer there is too much going on there to build with no experience in building one. HGR has them also every once in awhile. They would need some modifications but it would be much easier than building it from scratch.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01] * 1
    #26692961 - 05/24/20 03:47 PM (3 years, 8 months ago)

I was wary about the shiitake for just that reason, they have a long incubation period.  I'm leaning towards oyster and lion's mane.

I'll keep an eye at HGR for the flowhood.

Very impressive tek! Ill still keep that design handy.

I am interested in your low pressure drum build :smile:  Looking into all options for bulk sterilization.

Looks like I'll be buying an autoclave and batch mixer then  :takingnotes: 

Thanks for the tips so far! Been very helpful :smile:


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru] * 1
    #27099527 - 12/20/20 03:21 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

Happy Holidays everyone!
                        It has been a long time since I have posted an update.  A lot has happened since last post which I will summarize.  I originally got involved with the school to grow mushrooms but I am also in charge of the agricultural space at the school.  I spent a lot of time preparing the outdoor garden since it is the end of the year. I got it prepped for the Spring.  In addition to agriculture, I will be using the garden space for mushroom logs and mushroom mulch beds.  I will also be performing Mushroom Biotech experiments by making mushroom structures for the garden space.


Here is a partial look at the garden space.  It has a layer of aged horse manure and plenty of space for experiments.

The plan is to keep this thread updated more consistently from this point on.  Going full speed with gourmet mushroom production.  I will create a few posts to give a few major updates of what has happened over the past few months.


Edited by Shikamaru (12/20/20 04:18 PM)


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru] * 2
    #27099547 - 12/20/20 03:33 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

One of the first and best things I did was to finally build a flowhood!  I never had a flowhood ever in my life.  I've been still air boxing it since I got into Mycology.  After some research, I settled on building instead of buying my flowhood. I am very glad I made that decision! I was able to find a large Hepa Filter on Craigslist for $200 :cool:  It was from a broken flow cabinet and the filter was professionally cleaned and sanitized.  The gentleman I bought it from was going to use it to build a flow hood himself but he settled on focusing on agricultural garden instead.
            I followed some online flowhood build plans, adjusted for size of my filter in the design process, and built the beast below.
]

It works out fantastic! Did the lighter test and also left some freshly made plates open in front of the hood for 30 minutes and none contaminated.  Has made my life a lot easier on all fronts and has become cornerstone of my lab work.


Edited by Shikamaru (12/21/20 09:17 AM)


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru] * 2
    #27099567 - 12/20/20 03:49 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

In this update post, I'd like to focus on the spawn making process.  I'm currently running 3 presto pressure cookers which I use to prepare grain and sterilize. 


Above is a pic of the 50lb bags of whole oats that I use for grain spawn as well as the trusty presto pressure cooker.  I boil the oats to hydrate them in the same 23 quart pot and then i dry them in room pictured below.


I put down some thick plastic sheeting to place my damp grains on.  I have 2 large industrial fans that I use to quickly get grains at the correct moisture levels.  I will turn over the grain every so often and let fan run a few hours while checking moisture periodically.  Works great to easily process lots of grain.  In addition to normal large metal colanders, I also have 5 gallon buckets that I poke holes in to help process lots of grain at a time.  I drain the grain in colanders immediately after boiling and they will drain there for a couple hours before fan drying.


Above is a pic of some final grain jars after sterilizing.



Above is a pic of 5.5 pound bags of master mix.  I can fit four 5 lb bags per cooker if I struggle, but can more easily fit three per run.  These bags will be used for lions mane.



Does anyone have any experience using the above hardwood pellets?  I talked to the company and they said that the pellets are mainly Oak and maple in the recipe. 



I also got into liquid culture for the first time!  Found this 6 plate magnetic stirrer on Craigslist for $100 and I bought a liquid culture premix online.  I've had no contamination issues so far and love how fast the mycelium colonizes the grain from liquid culture.

Overall, spawn production is going very well!  I will be growing lion's mane and Black Trumpet mushrooms first.


Edited by Shikamaru (12/21/20 09:20 AM)


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru] * 1
    #27099597 - 12/20/20 04:10 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

This post will detail where I stand today (12/20/20).

  I am currently in the grow room design process.  I have collected many supplies, but am still collecting supplies and finalizing my plans.


Above is a picture of the room I will be transforming into a grow space.  The grow rom is 169 square feet and 1,352 Cubic Feet.  It already has a floor drain which is very handy and a sink. This room is located on the top floor so I have handy access to the roof.  My plan is to use the silver vent as an access point for fresh air.  I am currently thinking of going to the roof and completely removing the vent to have full access to outside air which I will duct in.

It is winter in Chicago and was wondering if anyone had any information on warming the incoming air before pumping into my grow room?  I plan to make a t least 2 separate grow rooms in this space dialed to different conditions to support strains that have different fruiting needs.  Is it a good plan to pump the cold air into the room and have heaters going in the room to warm the air and then pump the air in the room into the grow spaces?  Would the heaters be too slow to heat the air in time? Would it be better to pump outside air into adjacent room, heat air in that room, and them duct the heated outside air into the grow room? If anyone has any advice on heating cold air before ducting into the grow space, I would greatly appreciate any advice on proper direction.

Besides that consideration, I'm still trying to decide how to set up a grow tent.  I purchased 6 mil think contractor plastic from Lowes, Panda Film, and Sunfilm.  My plan is to use the contractor plastic to lay out the shape of the grow space and then layer that with either the panda film or the sunfilm.  Maybe do something like a giant martha.  Still deciding if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, I would love to hear them!

I have spawn of Lion's Mane, Black King Trumpet, and Wild ganoderma sessile I foraged and cloned myself that will be the first to experience the new grow space.  Hope to hear ideas from the community and will update more consistently from this post on.  Keep on Shroomin!


Edited by Shikamaru (12/20/20 04:24 PM)


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27099602 - 12/20/20 04:15 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

I'm just going to sit in on this thread.

This is a great education tool...Thanks for taking the time and effort to do it.


--------------------
Just a fool on the hill.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: pineninja] * 1
    #27099630 - 12/20/20 04:38 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

Welcome, and thank you! Glad others can learn along with me while building the gourmet farm.


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27099642 - 12/20/20 04:43 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

Use that vent for your exhaust air and just have fresh air come in from another room. Fresh air does not need to come from outside.

I would build a wall and not use plastic. Then put a tee on the exhaust and run to each room. Just have your fans cut on at different times to exhaust the rooms.


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #27099644 - 12/20/20 04:46 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)



The intake air is just coming from another room.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #27099706 - 12/20/20 05:23 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

Thank you very much for that feedback! That is very good to know that I don't need to directly use outside air, but can use air from another room.  I will follow your advice and vent the air out of that duct and pump in air from another, adjacent room and thank you for the design as well.

What would be best idea to build a wall? Would you recommend something like drywall?


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27100009 - 12/20/20 09:37 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

A good choice in my opinion is to cover the wall framing with Frp or something similar.

A different option is foam insulation boards.
But anything non reactive to water, would do.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: deadmandave]
    #27100098 - 12/20/20 10:58 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

This is what I used...

https://www.lowes.com/pd/47-75-in-x-7-98-ft-Smooth-Brown-Hardboard-Wall-Panel/1002959194?cm_mmc=shp-_-c-_-prd-_-mlw-_-google-_-lia-_-128-_-interiorwallpanels-_-1002959194-_-0&placeholder=null&ds_rl=1286981&gclid=Cj0KCQiAifz-BRDjARIsAEElyGK0WE1zH-TtojvmJAgzCEM5pEtq5NAad7J-j0oXT2CbSC6cH7PdrtgaAqoKEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

I then sealed the seams with duct tape and painted the wall with this...



It has held up for over 3 years and once a month I fill up a garden sprayer with 10% bleach and spray down everything. If you have a drain in the floor and you will get water on the floor I would buy a tube of 100% silicone caulking and a little mineral spirits and paint 3 or 4 inches up from the bottom of the board on both sides before you put it up no matter what type of paneling you use. That way it will be protected against water fairly well just in case.

Just thin the silicone with the mineral spirits until it is thin enough to paint it on.



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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #27100130 - 12/20/20 11:26 PM (3 years, 1 month ago)

Thank your for the suggestions of Frp/hardwood wall panel. The hardwood wall panel is cheap which is great and I belive there is some metal framing around the school. I'll check on that tomorrow. 

Will make use of the drylok to waterproof the walls and that's a great pro tip about painting both sides of panels for waterproofing!

This advice is really helping me round plans together.  Will sketch out my plan and share on here


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru] * 1
    #27125098 - 01/04/21 01:32 AM (3 years, 24 days ago)

Happy New Years everyone! I spent this weekend building out my grow tent. I still have to fine tune and dial in the tent, but it is currently operational with some lions mane bags fruiting.




The above pictures show the space I built the tent in before I got started. There was an old gas line that had fallen and I reattached it to the ceiling. My plan was to use 6 milliliter thick black plastic to form the outer shell of the grow tent. The wood pieces you see are there to form two walls of plastic, and then the rest of the plastic will be lined directly against the walls, ceiling, and floor. The two walls I needed to make are the front wall and on the left side of the room where their is a pipe leading to the roof that I didn't want to cover. I installed a floor door stop shown in third picture to prevent the wooden door to the room from opening into the grow tent.





The first picture above shows the start of installing the black plastic. I started with layering it against the back wall. I used gorilla tape initially to hold it in place and then I nailed the plastic to the wallby placing a piece of gorilla tape over the area I planned to nail and drove the nail through the tape to help prevent plastic from tearing. The next pic shows me staging up to create the front flowing wall of plastic. I measured out the length and then nailed the plastic to the wood beam. I made sure to leave some overhang on top of the wood so that I would be able to tape it to the plastic I will eventually attach to ceiling. The third picture shows me installing the wooden beam to the ceiling. I was able to prop one end on the old gas line and then I used another wooden beam to hold the structure in place. Would have been easier with some help at this point, but I built the tent solo. I used four inch construction screws to attach the beam to the ceiling.  I over engineered it by placing a lot of screws into it to ensure stability. The fourth pic shows the beam with the flowing plastic successfully attached to the ceiling. You can see the overhang of plastic at the top, which is to ensure I will be able to create an airtight, enclosed tent.



The two pics above show the plastic being attached to the ceiling. There is an existing fluorescent light system in the grow space so I attached the ceiling plastic around the light in order to make use of it. I eventually plan to encase the light with clear plastic to keep humidity out.






The above four pics show the space after it has been fully encased in plastic. I used black and white gorilla tape to combine the various pieces of plastic that were cut to size. I went crazy with the tape at this stage since the black plastic's job is to form the shape of the space and be air tight. It is going to be covered with a layer of panda film so looks don't matter at this stage. I used a zipwall that I purchased from Home Depot in order to create a zipper entrance to the space which can be seen in third picture. The fourth pic gives a full view of tent at this stage in construction from the outside.




The first pic above shows the beginning of me installing the panda film. The panda film was easier to install than the black plastic because it was layered on top of the black plastic. I used tape to hold it in place initially and then nailed the panda film to the wall in a few places to keep it up. I used the same process as the black plastic by placing tape on the area I planned to nail to keep the panda film from tearing. I used the white gorilla tape exclusively for the inside with the panda film. I also used the tape to attach the pieces of panda film together. The next two pictures show the finished product after I attached the panda film to the entire interior of the space. I attached an additional zipwall zipper to the inside panda film so there are two zippers to go through to fully enter the grow space.





The first piece of equipment that I installed was the humidification system.  I'm using a twelve disc ultrasonic humidifier for this tent. I built out my humidifier tote first which didn't take too long.  I drilled one hole for the inline fan to blow the humidity and then another hole which I attached ducting where the humidity is pumped through. The ducting is held temporarily by gorilla tape in the picture above. That is one of my fine tuning areas that I will change. The second picture shows the ducting in a closeup view. The ducting coming directly out of the ceiling is my fresh air intake duct while the other carries the humidity.





The above two pictures show the fresh air intake system. The tent is positive pressurized so I have an inline fan attached to a carbon filter pushing air into the grow tent which is shown in the first pic. I was able to attach the air intake system on the wooden beam that is holding the front flowing wall of plastic. There is a nice cavity above the wooden beam in the middle so I placed the filter and fan right on top of the beam and screwed it into place. I then ran ducting down onto the tent from above. The second pic shoes the ducting entering the top of the grow tent. I cut a hole into the plastic slightly too small for the duct. I then pushed the duct through the whole which made a snug fit. I took gorilla taped and taped where the plastic and ducting meet to make an airtight seal.





The first pic above show the grow room after adding some shelving and lions mane sawdust blocks. The second picture also shows the space after I turned on the humidifier tote. The 12 disc humidifier pumps out a looot of humidity. When I left, I was reading 91% humidity in the room. The last two closeup  pictures show the lion mane blocks after I cut them in different ways to initiate fruiting.  I'm experimenting with many different ways to fruit the lions mane to see what works best. Some of the blocks starting fruiting inside the bag because grow room wasn't ready yet so I just cut the tops of the bags which had the thickest fruit. I then cut slots or poked hole on the top and sides of the bags in different ways to see what I like best.





The above pic shows the tent at its current state of completion.  You can see the air intake system up top and the room inflated a bit due to the air flowing in. I still have to install an inline exhaust fan to the room. I need to buy more ducting so I will finish that up tomorrow.  I also have more tweaks to do like replacing the tape holding the ducting inside the tent and dialing in my conditions. I'm very happy with how it has turned out so far. I will post another update after I get the tent finalized.
Please let me know if you have any questions about how I put this together and/or if you have any suggestions.  I learned a lot from this site and hope this write up helps someone else out there :smile:


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27125137 - 01/04/21 02:43 AM (3 years, 24 days ago)

Good job so far but I am confused. Why do you have a carbon filter? Carbon filters are to take odor out of the air. Where are you running your exhaust and how are you getting it out of the building? Just so you know what you are using as duct is more than likely going to cause you some trouble you are going to get water build up in it.


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OfflineShikamaru
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #27125417 - 01/04/21 06:54 AM (3 years, 24 days ago)

You are totally right about the carbon filter haha. I read that I should install a filter to the the inline fan before pumping air into the room and I bought the carbon filter spur of the moment and found out later it is primarily for odor reduction.  I figured I would just install it to at least partially filter the air before pumping in. Do you have a recommended filter for the inline fan? I will add that to my fine tuning list.
I see PVC is commonly used for ducting. I will replace the metal ducting with pvc pipe since that seems like it would be better for water build up issues.


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Offlinedeadmandave
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27125985 - 01/04/21 11:52 AM (3 years, 24 days ago)

Staying busy I see. Looks good.

You can use furnace filter material. Maybe you could wrap it around the carbon filter. But what I did is make a box with a filter on one side and the fan ducted into the other.

how are you exhausting the fruiting room air?


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: deadmandave]
    #27126131 - 01/04/21 12:55 PM (3 years, 24 days ago)

Appreciate it deadmandave, that is a good idea regarding the filter box.  That is same principle as the blower fan for the flowhood, which makes a lot of sense.  I'm thinking I might just wrap the carbon filter with another filter material like you suggested.  It is already wrapped in a pre filter so I'll just wrap that in a furnace filter and that should be good.  The carbon filter will trap any odors that escape into the room area and I already bought it so might as well put it to use.


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OfflineSHROOMSISAY01M
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27127203 - 01/04/21 10:15 PM (3 years, 24 days ago)

Quote:

Shikamaru said:
You are totally right about the carbon filter haha. I read that I should install a filter to the the inline fan before pumping air into the room and I bought the carbon filter spur of the moment and found out later it is primarily for odor reduction.  I figured I would just install it to at least partially filter the air before pumping in. Do you have a recommended filter for the inline fan? I will add that to my fine tuning list.
I see PVC is commonly used for ducting. I will replace the metal ducting with pvc pipe since that seems like it would be better for water build up issues.




PVC is what I use. If you use PVC you will more than likely have to cut a 1" piece of PVC and cut it along the 1 inch so you can fit it in the pipe this will make it fit your fan much better.

I don't use a filter I don't think it is needed. I also don't blow air into my room. Positive pressure will cause you to have a bunch of spores outside of your tent and that will cause your filter to clog up sooner than it should. Not my choice but I would use passive air you will cut down on the need for a fan that way and you can use it as a circulation fan instead because you are going to need a circulation fan also. But that is how I would do it to each their own. Positive pressure should be used for your lab. but it looks like you have a big enough space so you can separate the lab from the fruiting tent to keep the positive air from the fruiting room from blowing into your lab.

How are you going to get your exhaust outside? You must have an exhaust fan otherwise that room will fill up with co2 and you will not grow good shrooms.


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Offlinegolden-student
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #27128062 - 01/05/21 11:56 AM (3 years, 23 days ago)

Following.

I will enjoy watching this project unfold. Good luck!


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: SHROOMSISAY01]
    #27147683 - 01/14/21 12:42 PM (3 years, 14 days ago)

I'm going to definitely use that tip about the PVC SHROOMISSAY01.  The ducting I  have now will be coming down soon, the PVC will be more secure and stable. 

Luckily, the room I am using is on 3rd floor of building and it is in an old laundry room that has an exhaust that leads to the roof.  I have a duct connected to an inline fan that exhausts air through this duct.  I am going to do an update soon showing how that is hooked up.


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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru] * 1
    #27147752 - 01/14/21 01:14 PM (3 years, 14 days ago)

I'm still tweaking my grow tent but I have some lion's mane growing inside simultaneously. I am doing R&D in my tent for now so I am fruiting my lion'
s mane bags in different ways to see what happens.  I cut the bag completely off the top of some of them, cut slits in some, holes in other, some had one puncture, other had multiple punctures and etc.  It's cool to see how the lion's mane grows under different parameters.  All the Lion's Mane was grown using Masters Mix which is 50% Hardwood pellets and 50% soy hull pellets which are combined, hydrated, and sterilized.   



The pictures above show a bag that I top fruited.  I let it keep going to see how tall it would get and it didn't disappoint.  The fruit layer is much taller than the sawdust layer.  The tall sides of the bag made a high CO2 environment that the mushrooms were trying to escape from for fresh air.  I've already eaten some and they taste great.  My plan is to dehydrate and encapsulate the ones I top fruited as well as eat myself :crazy2:



The above two pictures show a bag that I top fruited by only cutting a portion of the bag off the top.  The only significant fruit is on the side of the bag with the hole as it reaches for fresh air.  Lion's mane can form some interesting shapes when it has to reach out to breathe.



The above pics show some of the fruit that I am top fruiting more traditionally.  These bags I cut a small slit on top, evacuated the air, folded the flaps of bag over it self and turned it upside down.  I cut slits into some of them and cut holes into others.  The ones above are top fruited, in different configurations.



The above pics show more that I made slits/holes on the side which is most traditional methods.  They are getting big and looking good so far. They feel very meaty and I plan to harvest before spines elongate too long. Some of the them will be harvested within 24 hours from now. 

This is my first time growing Lion's Mane and am very happy with results so far!  Will be growing more and trying other species to grow alongside the Lion's mane.  Going to update in few days on status of the tent itself after I finish a few additions.


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OfflineAkuma7
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Re: Starting a School Mushroom Farm [Re: Shikamaru]
    #27148326 - 01/14/21 06:18 PM (3 years, 14 days ago)

That is some beautiful lion's Mane fruiting Shikamaru


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