- Thread starter
- #281
Extraction
I know, that somewhere in my life there is a 120mm Silenx PC fan. It’s likely in one of the boxes of studio equipment that I can’t get to right now. We’ve looked everywhere else and it hasn’t surfaced yet. So - plan B was born, and it gave rise to plan C... but I’m getting ahead of us.
We’re on day 11 since the Blue Dream woke up. Extraction for the tent was actually in place on day 7, I just haven’t been up to posting about it yet. I still have some tweaking to do to get the basic environmentals to settle. I realise there’ll be tweaking to do as the pant develops too. So for now I’m trying to stabilise it as best as possible. I’m hoping for input and guidance here - I’m not at all experienced with growing indoors so environmental management is new to me. I’ve read a lot about it - but that’s just theory and anecdote. Now I need to make it happen.
I can’t buy an extraction fan so I was always going to be DIYing it. This project is about doing it for no new cost whatsoever - use only what is here now.
I’ve therefore done a lot of reading and watching videos about working with PC fans. Plan A thwarted by boxes, we move to plan B, which involved this:
A broken laptop stand had these awesome fans attached to the back with plug-in USB power (5v). I salvaged the fan section and pulled them out.
They are wired together really well, and have a little plug for power input and a darling little switch (I love mini things
)
So these seemed a perfect plan B
I did a lot of reading about fan stacking and was thinking to rack them at either end of a tube and fit the plug and the switch into the tube between them. Originally I thought mailing tube - but the one I was thinking of had some photographic images in it that cant go anywhere else right now. No worries, left over plumbing pipe will maybe be even better. SO I had a whole design and plan for how I was going to do it and then 2 problems presented themselves. 1. It was going to require a bit more drilling, and a little hacksaw, and my hands/forearms are still recovering from the light build. 2. A bit more reading about stacking and, getting deeper in, I began to understand that while it can work, there’s a whole pressure and flow relationship involved, so there is optimum distance between the fans required to really make it efficient. Otherwise it’s just making more noise, and possibly even impeding airflow. I could do it, but I’d need to have the fans just the right distance apart. The margins here are so fine, you’d really need to measure your fans pressure etc to get it precise. I could tell, by holding the fans different distances apart in front of my face, that there was a sweet spot for sure. But it was fleeting, and fook trying to get that just right, right?
Enter plan C
The fans went back in their case section (open on one side, grilled on the other - sounds like I’m cooking something, but I’m no LadyG. You really don’t want me making your food!).
I took some insulating foam stuff left over form building the big shed, and a small cardboard box, some gaffers tape, cutting blade and scissors and went to work.
It’s not pretty, but it’s sealed well enough and it sucks some air!
I’m running it at the lowest possible voltage.
And even then, at this stage of the grow its pulling a bit too hard. I spent a few days trying different timings and have it set now for 30mins on 30mins off, and I have one fan partially blocked. Set like this my humidity fluctuates between 41-58, and most often between 45-51 (depending on whether the other fan in the tent is running or not). If I let both fans rip all the time, it gets super dry in there, like down to 36 at one point, while I was experimenting.
So that experimenting leads me to this - there were times when the conditions were fluctuating wildly as I was figuring it out. Never for very long, maybe an hour or so worth either really high or really low humidity. There were also a couple of nights that got a little too cold (15-16ºC) but I’m on top of that now
(it gets down to 18ºC - so still a bit cold).
This was obviously not ideal for a new seedling, and it’s looking a little funky. Mostly the second leaves, they’re all wiggly twisty. I did see a whole lot of Blue Dream babies (when I google searched) with the exact same look going on so clearly its a possible thing. But there were some without it too, so I’m guessing the strain has a tendency to do this under a certain kinds of stress, which I’m assuming here is environmental. If its not the humidity and temp fluctuation, could it perhaps be the light? I did move it up off the floor to help with the low overnight temps. Here, have a look at today - it’s been 3 feet from the light for a good many days now, and I can’t remember if the funky leaves started before or after I did that. (Oops)
The petioles are looking not so nice light green anymore either... I’m starting to think it’s possible the first drench will need to be a TP, but there’s some time to go yet...
Poor thing, I also had a clumsy moment of dropping the Accurite on it - for like a split second, but still. Bit of a rough start its getting
(I’ll need to factor in periods of clumsiness after manual DIY projects and make the tent clumsy proof at those times 
)
I’m not at all stressed at all about any of this. Just seeking guidance. There’s always another seed, right? and this is my learning how to grow indoors trip - so everything is a good.
Back to the extraction unit. I’m pretty happy with how much air it’s pulling - which is actually too much right now, so... I’m thinking it’s ripe for a little addition. I think I’m going to purchase some activated carbon and make a little scrubber for it. I dont need to scrub the smell really - I’m on acres. But it might be nice to reduce it a bit, seeing as I sleep in the room where the tent is, and sometimes we’ve had to put off getting work done here until certain smells are contained in jars, so it can’t hurt and it sounds like a fun project. I’m going to base it on this one here, that another 420 member called @HashAssassin (who doesn’t seem to be here anymore) made back in 2011
DIY Can-Filter
If I make it so I can adjust how much scrubbing goes on or how much air it can take in, it might help me control the extraction rate a bit. And hopefully I’ll find that both fans full on all the time is excellent extraction during flowering, and that covering the scrubber part reduces it enough for during early veg. So that’s the plan going forward. For now I thing I have it stabilised, but it still gets a little bit colder than I’d like overnight (17-19ºC). Would turning the heat mat on overnight help with this? The pot is about half a foot off the ground, on a crate so it wouldn’t be touching the heat mat. Or is that just going to be a waste of electricity?
Thank y’all for reading (or looking). Hoping someone will have some insight about the seedling stress, if that’s indeed what it is.
I know, that somewhere in my life there is a 120mm Silenx PC fan. It’s likely in one of the boxes of studio equipment that I can’t get to right now. We’ve looked everywhere else and it hasn’t surfaced yet. So - plan B was born, and it gave rise to plan C... but I’m getting ahead of us.
We’re on day 11 since the Blue Dream woke up. Extraction for the tent was actually in place on day 7, I just haven’t been up to posting about it yet. I still have some tweaking to do to get the basic environmentals to settle. I realise there’ll be tweaking to do as the pant develops too. So for now I’m trying to stabilise it as best as possible. I’m hoping for input and guidance here - I’m not at all experienced with growing indoors so environmental management is new to me. I’ve read a lot about it - but that’s just theory and anecdote. Now I need to make it happen.
I can’t buy an extraction fan so I was always going to be DIYing it. This project is about doing it for no new cost whatsoever - use only what is here now.
I’ve therefore done a lot of reading and watching videos about working with PC fans. Plan A thwarted by boxes, we move to plan B, which involved this:
A broken laptop stand had these awesome fans attached to the back with plug-in USB power (5v). I salvaged the fan section and pulled them out.
They are wired together really well, and have a little plug for power input and a darling little switch (I love mini things
)So these seemed a perfect plan B
I did a lot of reading about fan stacking and was thinking to rack them at either end of a tube and fit the plug and the switch into the tube between them. Originally I thought mailing tube - but the one I was thinking of had some photographic images in it that cant go anywhere else right now. No worries, left over plumbing pipe will maybe be even better. SO I had a whole design and plan for how I was going to do it and then 2 problems presented themselves. 1. It was going to require a bit more drilling, and a little hacksaw, and my hands/forearms are still recovering from the light build. 2. A bit more reading about stacking and, getting deeper in, I began to understand that while it can work, there’s a whole pressure and flow relationship involved, so there is optimum distance between the fans required to really make it efficient. Otherwise it’s just making more noise, and possibly even impeding airflow. I could do it, but I’d need to have the fans just the right distance apart. The margins here are so fine, you’d really need to measure your fans pressure etc to get it precise. I could tell, by holding the fans different distances apart in front of my face, that there was a sweet spot for sure. But it was fleeting, and fook trying to get that just right, right?
Enter plan C
The fans went back in their case section (open on one side, grilled on the other - sounds like I’m cooking something, but I’m no LadyG. You really don’t want me making your food!).
I took some insulating foam stuff left over form building the big shed, and a small cardboard box, some gaffers tape, cutting blade and scissors and went to work.
It’s not pretty, but it’s sealed well enough and it sucks some air!
I’m running it at the lowest possible voltage.
And even then, at this stage of the grow its pulling a bit too hard. I spent a few days trying different timings and have it set now for 30mins on 30mins off, and I have one fan partially blocked. Set like this my humidity fluctuates between 41-58, and most often between 45-51 (depending on whether the other fan in the tent is running or not). If I let both fans rip all the time, it gets super dry in there, like down to 36 at one point, while I was experimenting.
So that experimenting leads me to this - there were times when the conditions were fluctuating wildly as I was figuring it out. Never for very long, maybe an hour or so worth either really high or really low humidity. There were also a couple of nights that got a little too cold (15-16ºC) but I’m on top of that now
(it gets down to 18ºC - so still a bit cold).This was obviously not ideal for a new seedling, and it’s looking a little funky. Mostly the second leaves, they’re all wiggly twisty. I did see a whole lot of Blue Dream babies (when I google searched) with the exact same look going on so clearly its a possible thing. But there were some without it too, so I’m guessing the strain has a tendency to do this under a certain kinds of stress, which I’m assuming here is environmental. If its not the humidity and temp fluctuation, could it perhaps be the light? I did move it up off the floor to help with the low overnight temps. Here, have a look at today - it’s been 3 feet from the light for a good many days now, and I can’t remember if the funky leaves started before or after I did that. (Oops)
The petioles are looking not so nice light green anymore either... I’m starting to think it’s possible the first drench will need to be a TP, but there’s some time to go yet...
Poor thing, I also had a clumsy moment of dropping the Accurite on it - for like a split second, but still. Bit of a rough start its getting
(I’ll need to factor in periods of clumsiness after manual DIY projects and make the tent clumsy proof at those times )I’m not at all stressed at all about any of this. Just seeking guidance. There’s always another seed, right? and this is my learning how to grow indoors trip - so everything is a good.
Back to the extraction unit. I’m pretty happy with how much air it’s pulling - which is actually too much right now, so... I’m thinking it’s ripe for a little addition. I think I’m going to purchase some activated carbon and make a little scrubber for it. I dont need to scrub the smell really - I’m on acres. But it might be nice to reduce it a bit, seeing as I sleep in the room where the tent is, and sometimes we’ve had to put off getting work done here until certain smells are contained in jars, so it can’t hurt and it sounds like a fun project. I’m going to base it on this one here, that another 420 member called @HashAssassin (who doesn’t seem to be here anymore) made back in 2011
DIY Can-Filter
If I make it so I can adjust how much scrubbing goes on or how much air it can take in, it might help me control the extraction rate a bit. And hopefully I’ll find that both fans full on all the time is excellent extraction during flowering, and that covering the scrubber part reduces it enough for during early veg. So that’s the plan going forward. For now I thing I have it stabilised, but it still gets a little bit colder than I’d like overnight (17-19ºC). Would turning the heat mat on overnight help with this? The pot is about half a foot off the ground, on a crate so it wouldn’t be touching the heat mat. Or is that just going to be a waste of electricity?
Thank y’all for reading (or looking). Hoping someone will have some insight about the seedling stress, if that’s indeed what it is.
I know I’m weeks away from the first drench. So the questions were environmental, not kit related as such
human plastic waste.. have any of you seen some of the images of beaches that are literally thick plastic waste soup... really sad, and kinda scary. ... gee that was a tangent (I’m always slipping into rabbit holes 
(wasn’t for long). Other than that I’m between 45-55% 
...