This is my first write-up, so bear with me.
I'm at a place in my cultivation journey where new and more challenging species are my main focus. Some of the species I'm working with needs cold temperatures(10-16°C/50-60°F) and others prefer warmer temperatures(25-28°C/77-82°F).
I have been thinking of ways to achieve this in the same room as I fruit everything else that holds between 20-24°C/68-75°F and this temperature controlled fruiting chamber can do both warm and cold without changing the temperature in the room.
I've been homebrewing for several years and made a temperature controlled fermentation fridge for fermenting both cold and warm loving yeast a long time ago. I don't brew that much these days, and even if I wanted to, converting the fermentation fridge to a fruiting chamber doesn't prevent me from using it for fermentation if I want.
There are many ways to make this work and depending on what you can get where you live I'm sure there are better options for several of the things I've used, but I had to work with what I could get locally. With that out of the way let's take a closer look at the build.
You would need:
- Fridge
- Heat source
- Temperature controller
- Humidifier
- Lights
- Automated tubs
- Speed adjustable fans
- Double threaded bulkhead fittings
- PVC Tubing
- Thermowell(Optional)
I bought the fridge used, got it for $30, it needed a thorough cleaning, but other then that, it has worked great for 6 years and still running fine.
As a heat source I chose a 45w heating tube. It's mostly used as a frost guard for boats. I really like it because it can handle a wide range of temperatures and is IP65. It can get up to 85% inside the fruiting chamber when the humidifier is running. This heating tube have no problem getting the inside of the fridge to 40°C/104°F.
There are many temperature controllers out there, where I'm at not so much as we are on a 240V grid. So I got what I could get at the time and that was the Inkbird-ITC-308. Also 6 years old and never had a problem with it.
For the humidifier I don't have many options either, and ended up with another Mars Hydro. I've been using the first one for about 6 months and the only downside to it so far is cleaning it. The really good thing about it, is that it has a high end humidity probe and there is much less fiddling to dial in the tubs. I set it to 90% and that is giving me great surface conditions, doesn't dry out and no pooling.
As for lights I probably had different requirements then what others would need because I was doing another shelf with Dreamer Tubs next to the fruiting chamber and was looking for lights that would cover 4 tubs, could handle the humidity inside the fruiting chamber, adjust the light intensity, and had a built in timer.
I ended up getting the AC Infinity S16. They had everything I was looking for and more, I absolutely love them, but they are overkill for sure.
The tubs I got is the biggest I could fit on each shelf. They are 52L(55qt). I've found that I get a more consistent environment when I placed the fan high up in a tall tub and that is the main reason for choosing the tubs.
I use 2 different fans, for the fridge it's just 2 cheap computer fans that I've hooked up to a fan controller, this is to spread the heat from the heating tube and to increase the FAE inside the fridge.
The fans for the tubs are the same as the one PhenoDreamers uses on his Dreamer Tubs . They are IPX5 and have 10 speed adjustments. The speed adjustments is very important because of the different hose length from the humidifier to the tubs. I'll come back to this later.
Thermowell is optional, but I recommend using one, the reason being that air temperature will change pretty rapidly, fluctuate a lot and most humidifiers have cold fog. You don't want to trigger the temperature controller every time the humidifier kicks in.
A thermowell holds the temperature probe inside and it will take some time before the temperature changes and triggers the controller.
As I said earlier, there are many ways of doing this, this is how I did mine.
In the bottom of the fridge the compressor takes up a lot of room, trying to get the most out of the space I have, I decided to put the heating tube there. I didn't want to risk mounting it directly in the plastic so I got a piece of bathroom wall panels and glued it on, let it dry and then mounted the heating tube.
I know there isn't anything but insulation inside the sides of my fridge so I just cut out space for most of my cords like this.
I then made the first shelf(all shelves are bathroom wall panels) and placed the two computer fans on it. They are hooked up to a fan controller I had, but I run them full speed 24/7.
Next shelf will hold the first automated tub. As mentioned above I used a 52 liter tub. I placed the fan as high as possible in the center of the short side of the tub. Looking from the inside of the tub I placed the bulkhead fittings to the left of the fan and the thermowell(which will hold the temperature controller probe) to the right.
I placed the temperature controller's probe on this tub because this is the tub closest to the heat source, but with the shelf fans running 24/7 there seems to be pretty consistent temperature between the tubs.
The last shelf holds the second tub. The only build difference from the first is that instead of the temperature controller's probe in the thermowell, it's the humidifier's humidity/temperature probe on the right.
I chose to drill holes in the fridge to connect the humidifier hoses to the tubs using PVC tubing. My initial thought was to use garden hose connections, but that failed due to water build-up in the narrow part of the connections and blocking the fog vapor.
I made the holes in the fridge so that the PVC tube can easily be moved back and forth because that is how I am able to connect and disconnect them to the bulkhead fittings on the tubs, you have to be precise when drilling the holes, but it's not rocket science 
So I got the tubing size closest to both the bulkhead fittings and humidifier hoses. At this point I used electrician tape to make sure nothing is leaking, when I'm 100% sure this setup works for both cold and warm fruiting, I'll use silicon sealant on the humidifier hose and PVC tubing side, right now it looks like this.
Different setups with different humidifiers will give different results, so I'm sure my settings won't actually help anyone dial in they're setup. I have my humidifier set to 90% and I run my tub fans 15 minutes of every hour. So 15 minutes on and 45 minutes off.
After running this setup for a couple of days I noticed that my trays in the lower tub had different surface conditions then the upper tub holding the humidifier probe. I used a lot of time thinking of how I could split the hose, make it longer ect to get the humidity consistent in both tubs. Luckily I thought about it long enough to come to the idea of using the tub fans instead 
And it has been working great. I have the upper tub's fan running on 1(lowest speed) and set the lower tub's fan to 6, that looked okay for a week, but I have now reduced the fan to 4. Like I said you will need to dial it in and depending on your setup it might be very different from how I do it, the point is, use the fans if the environment between the tubs is not consistent.
Good news is, you could run species with different humidity needs in the same setup with just fan speed adjustment.
I hope this write-up is clear enough for anyone looking to build something similar, if not just ask here or send me a pm and I'll try to answer any questions and add the information to this original post.
There are to many that inspired me to do this build and I would just hate myself for forgetting someone if I tried to write them down, so I'll just say thank you and that I am truly grateful for being a part of this great community 
What's been fruited:
Zapotecorum Popocatepetl
Edited by Kloakk (08/28/26 07:00 AM)
|
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Substrate Mix 
Pan Cyan Liquid Culture For Sale 
All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck 
Bulk Cannabis Seeds 
Spores for European Microscopy 
Cultivation Supplies
Kloakk
tree frog 
Edit 
Reply 
1 2 3 4 all )
Diploid
Jon_Doe
NewbieShroomer
CoolBlue
