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Surille
Stranger
Registered: 04/30/05
Posts: 1
Last seen: 18 years, 11 months
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Sterilization of a Room
#4113859 - 04/30/05 06:39 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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Hello everyone, I need advice, as I am sure others do too. Well, the basic information I am wanting from anyone and everyone who knows anything about the subject, is the best way to go about sterilizing an entire room for a contamination free working environment. I am talking an average sized room, with one or no windows, a closet, and one entry door. I look forward to all the responses and hope for the best so we can all end up working in a perfectly safe environment where we don't have to worry about our projects coming to untimely ends due to dreaded, infectious... CONTAMINATIONS!
Thank you, Surille Brimosteliblis AKA Cyan-Essence
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Jeremy_Davis
Mycelial NetworkAdministrator
Registered: 04/22/05
Posts: 652
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 12 years, 8 days
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Re: Sterilization of a Room [Re: Surille]
#4131659 - 05/04/05 08:23 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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You have several options for decontamination of a room. Going from extremely cheap to moderately expensive. And it also depends on the size of the room. An easy way would be to spray lysol all over the room and follow that by a 10% bleach spray, and allow that to settle for 15 minutes. The idea is that the contaminant particles are captured by the falling droplets and killed by the bleach/lysol depending on what type of contaminant you are talking about. Probably the most likely to be probalematic, but cheapest. Next Wal-Mart sells a small single room true HEPA for a 10 x 15 room that also has an ionizer on it for under $30. I would recommend using several in a room. If using it like a clean bench, it can be turned on its side, so that the flow of clean air is directly pointed towards your work area. If you're using it to clean a grow room, you'll probably be best off to buy new ones each time. With my work on pleurotus, I always get so many spores by the third flush that they cover the entire HEPA and everything. I could clean it out, but they're cheap enough to be disposable. Alternatively, you could look on eBay. I've bought thousands of dollars worth of HEPA's for dirt cheap there. I bought a HUGE crate of 8 3ft x 2ft HEPA's (we needed a forklift to take it off the truck at the farm) for $200 total, not each! I've also bought labratory pre constructed filters with fans and all for under $40 that must've cost over $400.00 new. It's just a matter of looking and being resourceful. Also covering the walls with a 1-3 mil plastic sheeting is a good idea, it makes them extremely easy to clean. Finally if you are decontaminating a room after an attack of trichoderma or some other green mold or castastrophic contamination, I would suggest building an ozone generator. I built one for about $50 following the instructions I found after doing a google search for "Build your own ozone generator" Basically you take a transformer from a neon sign (7500 watts or more, and I bought mine from a neon sign store , it was used $30.) and run the electrodes to two pieces of foil separated by a thin pane of glass ( I used the glass from a 4 x 6 picture frame). That's a horrible description, but I'm sure you can find it if you look. Anyway, according to some of the info I read ozone has a sterilizing power 3000 times greater than bleach, I was sold. Ozone is only for use in rooms where you are not present in. It will kill everything (including you if you're in there long enough) in the room. It fills the room with O3, then over the period of 30 minutes, it degrades perfectly into O2 safe oxygen, after oxidizing everything in the room. Basically if you can smell it it's damaging your lungs. So I run it in the grow room while I'm out side with the on off out where I am, and i don't go back into the room for an hour or more. Hope that was helpful. I use a combination of the bleach spray, 15 minute wait and inoculate in front of HEPA flow hood (that I built for less than $150 with one of my 3 x 2's.) Hope that helps. Jeremy Davis
-------------------- Jeremy Davis Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc. Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta
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SoopaX
Criminal DrugAnalyst
Registered: 11/12/04
Posts: 1,690
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Re: Sterilization of a Room [Re: Surille]
#4131705 - 05/04/05 08:44 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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Take EVERYTHING physical out of the room that can be removed. Drapes, beds, anything that is able to be moved out should be moved out. We'll work on cleaning the room and nothing will be brought into the room that isn't clean.
A preliminary cleaning of the room is in order first. Vacuum the floors (even if it's wood floors or hard flooring). Use the vac's stair attachment to get in the corners near the ceiling so that you can get any spiderwebs out of there. If your carpet is really filthy, shampoo it.
Now you have some options. If you are going to be using this room just for growing mushrooms (i.e. a lab), or if it's got a high spore load, or if you just like the smell of paint, then painting is the way to go. White paint, a few coats. My preferred option, since the room I was dealing with was freshly painted, was to wipe everything down with bleach water. I'm not a contractor so I don't know if this could fuck up some types of walls, but I know it worked for my painted drywall without causing any water absorption problems.
So now we've got a room thats fairly disinfected. I really like to go through at this point with a spray bottle of 91% rubbing alcohol and just get shit soaked. This is almost mandatory if you have carpets and you haven't shampooed them in the past few years. Let that iso kill what it can.
Now, start wiping things with bleach and bringing them back in the room. Don't bring in anything that hasn't been disinfected. This is just my way of cleaning things and it's only the method that is best suited for me. Good luck.
-------------------- Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women, man
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Mindzpore
Psychedelicious
Registered: 04/05/05
Posts: 319
Loc: Reject the concept of loc...
Last seen: 7 years, 6 months
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Re: Sterilization of a Room [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
#4131711 - 05/04/05 08:47 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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wooha! be extremely careful with the ozone, make sure you give it time to degrade. it will injure you seriously if you are exposed to it. not to mention that environmental issues would make this kind of ozone production illegal in many countries, (with fines way higher than anything your shroomgrow will amount to).
though the other ideas are solid. plastic on the walls, air-purifiers (with hepa and ionizer).
spray and wipe thoroughly.
and if you want to be extreme, wear plastic coveralls and install a shower cabin in the doorway to disinfect/clean the "suit".
also use a slight overpressure to make sure no contaminants enter the room.
-------------------- Mindzpores words of wisdom: "If you think something is foolproof, you just haven't met proper fools". Wiccan_Seeker said: "It is better to adjust to become a better listener than to keep on cranking up the volume".
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agar
old hand
Registered: 11/21/04
Posts: 9,056
Loc: Somewhere Else
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Re: Sterilization of a Room [Re: Surille]
#4131776 - 05/04/05 09:16 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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The quickest cheapest way is to empty the room, sanitize all surfaces, plug the forced air vent, then use a 10X100 foot roll of 2 to 4 mil plastic (HomeDepot / Lowes for about $23)& wallpaper the ceiling, walls & floor.
You can use sheetrock screws, a screw gun & small pieces of inexpensive plastic molding...to hold the plastic tightly in place. Use rubber mats in the walking area's to protect the plastic on the floor.
--------------------
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Prisoner#1
Even Dumber ThanAdvertized!
Registered: 01/22/03
Posts: 193,665
Loc: Pvt. Pubfag NutSuck
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Re: Sterilization of a Room [Re: agar]
#4131803 - 05/04/05 09:24 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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I used to make a tent by stapling a piece of plastic to the wall and ceiling, bring it out about 4 feet and drop it to the floor, staple it and tape the seams and staple holes, a few extra pieces can make a 'mantrap' to disinfect yourself and you have the rest of the room for other use like changing to lab clothes.
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blackout
Registered: 07/16/00
Posts: 5,266
Last seen: 5 months, 10 days
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Re: Sterilization of a Room [Re: Prisoner#1]
#4131961 - 05/04/05 10:18 AM (18 years, 11 months ago) |
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Tent idea sounds best, a small tent in a large tent for an easy to build "mantrap" as mentioned. A cheap tent of pure unwoven plastic would be best
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