Take a 1 to 3 liter soda bottle and drink the contents. Drill two holes in the lid to the same size as the air tubing your pump uses. Thread a tube through the lid and down to the bottom of the bottle. This is the air input tube. Fill the bottle with nice clean perlite and put on the lid. Push a second tube into the second hole, and seal the holes around the tube with something (hot glue works, or silicon sealant, or in a pinch, you can stuff a plastic grocery bag into it instead of using the cap).

Now lay the bottle on its side and use a knife to cut a hole about an inch in diameter in the side of the bottle. Get a piece of wide packing tape and put it over the hole (fold over about 1/2 inch of the tape so its easy to peel up later). This is where you will put in the water.

Peel up the tape and fill the bottle all the way with water, this makes sure the perlite is nice and wet. Then dump out most of the water, leave about 2 inches on the bottom. Attach the air pump to the input tube, then run the output tube into your grow chamber.

The bottle is left lying on its side because the water will not wick up through more than a few inches of perlite, so you want a large horizontal volume of perlite wet.

I have two alternate ideas for this system too. The first is a modification of this one. Get a 4 foot lenght of 3 inch PVC pipe and end caps. Glue an endcap on such that it is watertight, then attach a threaded 'L' adapter to the other end. Drill out the end caps for your air hoses and seal them to the PVC. Fill the entire thing with perlite and then fill the tube half way with water. Put the screw endcap on (with its tube attached, then turn the whole thing on its side. Now the air will be forced through 4 feet of wet perlite, which should put it as close to 100% RH as you can get.

An alternate solution would be to do something like what ripper said (or use the previous setup turned up on its end) and install one of those little $5 water pumps that will keep recirculating the water over the perlite, keeping it wet all the time.

I've had pretty good success with this, just gotta keep an eye on the water level, and I add about 2500PPM bleach (20:1 water:bleach) to keep down any contaminants.

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Maverick shroomed@rediffmail.com
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"I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us...
very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad..."

I lay perlite down in my terrainums, then I get a 1 pint wide mouth jar in fill it half way with a 50/50 mix of water and H2o2.

Putting the perlite IN WITH the water/H2o2 is a great idea. Perlite is a great natural humidifier but it is a mess to clean.

I've heard of people putting the air tubes directly in the perlite but that doesn't solve the hassle of cleaning up.

I know few bar owners....sounds like I'm going to get me some pitchers!

Materials
1/2 pint jar
drill with 1/4" drill bit and 1/32" drill bit(about the size of a syringe needle)
air pump(some hose too)
perlite

Alright, you want to first prepare the lid to the jar, on the one side you want to drill a 1/4" hole, and on the other you want to drill about 5 1/32" holes towards the top. now you want to fill the jar completely full of perlite and add about 1.5" of water, now add about 25 mL of hydrogen peroxide, now screw the top on, and insert your air pump hose into the 1/4" hole, I used some rubber cement to seal this, now lay this sideways, I actually attached this with duct tape to the side wall of the aquarium. it got the 15 gallon aquarium to 95% humidity in about 70 minutes. VERY COMPACTS HUMIDIFICATION TEK!

Let me know what you think, remember turn the jar on its side so that the side of the lid that has the air hose is on the bottom, so that the air pump is bubbling the water through the perlite.

[This message has been edited by Ripper (edited January 24, 2000).]

Danka Ripper

I've built a chamber that is 6 feet high by 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep and am trying to find a way to have the humidity correct without having to constantly monitor it (I'm only home 3 days a week).

I had humidifers on timers but the humidifiers break down too often to be cost effective.

Thanks