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Post by sokkos on Apr 11, 2016 13:02:52 GMT -5
I was visiting North Dakota State University last weekend and got a tour of their new greenhouse complex. NDSU is fairly active in agricultural research in the north west. Part of plant pathology research requires infecting plants with disease. To make sure the disease takes, we usually raise the humidity. NDSU had some cool looking humidity chambers that would be perfect for growing plants in. Best of all, it looks like these could be fairly inexpensive to build at home! Any thoughts? Essentially each chamber is a stainless steel box with a sliding plexiglass (?) front. Standard watering can for size comparison. These are quite tall to accommodate the plants, because certain diseases need to infect at the flowering stage (imagine how tall a flowering wheat plant is). Humidity is supplied by a humidifier from any department store (the manager said these are from walmart). Water vapour is directed through PVC piping. This keeps prevents the actual humidified from getting to wet and short circuiting. The chambers are arranged side by side like townhouses, and are divided by metal walls which means you could potentially keep multiple humidity treatments side by side. Maybe lowland/int/highland set up side by side? Each chamber is sealed at the top with plexiglass or acrylic and has its own lighting. The lights are outside the chamber and stay dry. For the orchid enthusiasts trying to force flowers, if you have a curtain over the sliding front door, you might be able to set multiple photoperiods across different chambers. It should be quite easy to build a small version of these chambers. You don't even need a metal casing for a hobby sized version. Any thoughts?
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Post by amanitovirosa on Apr 11, 2016 17:41:11 GMT -5
...these probably work well for their intended purpose. I see two problems. Those wal-mart humidifiers are too small and are almost impossible to clean. I had mine coming on for 15 minutes every hour and it seemed that I constantly had to refill it. I don't use it any more. Two, stainless steel and plexi glass are very expensive. You could build something very similar using cheaper materials. Cool facility though! AV.
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