Kaneo's Grow Log - NZ

[Kaneo]

I have harvested all my plants now and a second lot of leaves are coming through - Will these be worth harvesting? I'm guessing they wont be as good as the first crop but we still have at least 6 more weeks worth of growing here.

 

[johnlee1933]

I have harvested all my plants now and a second lot of leaves are coming through - Will these be worth harvesting? I'm guessing they wont be as good as the first crop but we still have at least 6 more weeks worth of growing here.

They may be a bit smaller but should be quite good also. Some of the gang here regularly get 2 crops.

 

[Kaneo]

I picked up a cheap fridge for $10 on the weekend, I striped out the fridge gear at the top and left in the twin fans. I'm not much of an electrician so I got a thermostat that the crockpot plugs into.

I have drilled a hole for the thermostat sensor and for the plug on the crock pot, I have not purchased any vents for the top of the fridge and the door seal is leaking quite badly, I put the crock pot on today to try things out and it got to 110 and 66rh - the temp was still slowly increasing and I think if I fix the door seal it should get to 120 and achieve a slightly better rh

I also put in some leaf to check for size and to see how much air movement there was. Note I have removed the leaf for now and shut the kiln down till I can do some more work on it.

I like the idea of filling the water outside of the kiln and siphoning it into the crock pot so I want to include that.

Some quick pics

 

[johnlee1933]

Way to go kaneo! I assume you have a magnetic door seal. Mine leaked pretty badly too when I got it. It was really fouled with kitchen dirt, mostly grease I think. Anyhow, I took kitchen cleaner in a squirt bottle and a stiff tooth brush and went to work. It cleaned up well and worked a lot better. The rubber/plastic has stiffened over the years. I find if I leave the door open when I'm not using it it expands out a little and seals better when I do close it. Don't drill any vent holes till you see where your RH settles in. I did and I had to plug then up. 110°F works pretty well so if you can't hold 120°F no worries. It might take a bit longer. I found an old heavily padded guilt. I draped it over the top figuring that is where the heat loss would be. I can't really say if it helped but it made me feel better. Good Luck. I really like the difference.

 

[Seanz]

Sweet cuz. Where did you get the thermastats from? Ian having a b?!×-? of a time sourcing one night have to end up forming over for one of tm.

 

[Lakota]

Sweet cuz. Where did you get the thermastats from? Ian having a b?!×-? of a time sourcing one night have to end up forming over for one of tm.

I use the 110 version in the link below, has been working for 2 years now with no problem.
http://www.buyincoins.com/new_en/pages/search--thermostat+control----1.html

 

[Kaneo]

johnlee,

Yr its a magnetic door seal, the seal is quite gungy and seems to have gone hard - i haveleft the door open over night as I had the crockpot going yesterday, I will have another go at trying to clean it up and maybe investigate some foam tape that might stick to it as the top of the door seal has a resonable gap.

Been a semi commercial display fridge it has plenty of holes that I was busy taping up when I was doing my heat / rh test, i will need to buy some expanding foam.

Also I only ran the crock pot on low to get those results, if I have to I'll try it on high but I hope I can fix it up better to keep it on the low setting.

I'm concerned about airflow in the lower part of the fridge and may have to purchase a small fan, also I got the thermostat from the switched on gardener shop for $120 a few months ago its probably a bit of a rip but I 'm not one to go playing with power and the ones I saw on trademe wouldn't get hot enough

 

[johnlee1933]

johnlee,

Yr its a magnetic door seal, the seal is quite gungy and seems to have gone hard - i haveleft the door open over night as I had the crockpot going yesterday, I will have another go at trying to clean it up and maybe investigate some foam tape that might stick to it as the top of the door seal has a resonable gap.

Been a semi commercial display fridge it has plenty of holes that I was busy taping up when I was doing my heat / rh test, i will need to buy some expanding foam.

Also I only ran the crock pot on low to get those results, if I have to I'll try it on high but I hope I can fix it up better to keep it on the low setting.

I'm concerned about airflow in the lower part of the fridge and may have to purchase a small fan, also I got the thermostat from the switched on gardener shop for $120 a few months ago its probably a bit of a rip but I 'm not one to go playing with power and the ones I saw on trademe wouldn't get hot enough

OK I think the door seal may regain some flexability when you get it clean. Mine kinda looked like a mini accordion. Cleaning the cracks was key to getting it to work again. Please keep me posted. Free fridges are common here and I might give it another bash (love that word).

For the fan -- Dead computers generally have a live power supply and working fan or two. You might want to play with that idea. Two good parts -- Free -- The fans are usually low voltage (12 VDC) so if you got across it you'd never feel it much less get hurt.

 

[AmaxB]

Am no expert Kaneo just going by my experience with the chamber I made.
Watched the vid - your air stream is kicking... think you could reduce it and be fine it can help RH gain. I put a ceiling fan control on mine and have been running on med setting
(very little air movement) and have no mold issues. I used EPDM type gasket got it at my hardware store has a self stick side and has been working well is also cheap if you need to replace your gasket this could be an answer. Love the big glass door and at 10 bucks cost you did good.

 

[Seanz]

I use the 110 version in the link below, has been working for 2 years now with no problem.
http://www.buyincoins.com/new_en/pages/search--thermostat+control----1.html

I have been looking at those and thats what i might get as everything else i have seen is either way to complicated or not doesnt get high enough.

 

[workhorse_01]

Are you using the fan from the evaporator? If so then if that's a freezer merchandiser the door has a heater built in where the gasket meets the cabinet. That is absolutely a controlled environment.

 

[Kaneo]

I have done some mods to the kiln. I have cleaned up the door seal, brought some foam tape and fitted this around the outside of the existing door seal, filled all the holes with expanding foam and added a siphon hose from a bucket outside of the kiln into the crockpot.

I ran a test run and the rh went straight up to 97rf=h and the kiln sits easy on 120', the thermostat clicks the crockpot off @ 122 and it restarts at 118. After a couple of hours the rh came back to the mid 70s and seems fairly constant, When the rh went to 97 I thought I may have to uplug a couple of holes again also this rh is been held with the fans still going flat out.

Also I had to rewire the fans, had a bad conection and kept losing power

I believe workhorse is correct - this is a display freezer not a fridge. The front glass pane has a built in demester like the one on rear window of the car.

 

[johnlee1933]

Nice looking job. Your numbers are in the sweet spot. Good luck. I'll be interested in your observations after the run and a month or so down the road after that.

 

[BarG]

Very cool. I have one observation to mention from my fridge kiln. I notice you have two tiers of hands. You may want to put all of the shortest hands on bottom tier to keep more distance from crock pot. When it runs low on water the closet leaf tips will dry from the heat if to close. Also some varietys with thinner leaf texture will hold a higher case if to close to sides. But mine would condense on sides of kiln during winter and cause the leaves to remain too high case,so watch for condensation with outside cold temps. I haven't run mine in summertime.
All in all my first fridge kiln produced enough kilned leaf in 2 months to last a year, with only minor issues of mold inside ,usually at uppermost part of stem, which I attribute to inexperience. I say again, I really like the glass front. I found the least dried part of Whole leaf placed in kiln is most suceptable to mold before spreading. You can probably see if the top of the hands are getting mold at a glance. I think it may be due to being densely packed and in my case the least dried.

 

[Seanz]

Looking good bro. We need to organise a get together with everyone. There's enough of us even a couple of females on the other site. A kiwi growehin dig. Put down a hangi.

 

[deluxestogie]

You might consider a trial run with the lid on the Crock Pot, to keep the humidity down.

Bob

 

[BarG]

I still have some insulated glass for 3'x6'8" doors. I will have to save one for a new kiln. I just can't seem to get my hands on the styro insulation I want to use.

 

[Kaneo]

I got home from work today and the kiln was on 118 with 69rh, the crock pot was switched off by the thermostat and not long after clicked back into gear. I was thinking about placing the lid on or some sort of setup like LeftyRighty though the rh seems to have settled down abit.

I'll have alook at redistributing the hands, the hands touching the glass have condensated up also its a good idea about placing the shorter hands on the bottom shelf.
Also I'm getting quite a big puddle on the shed floor? do you normally get the much condensation or is this still my door seal?

I need to look at my siphon hose also, to ensure the end in the crockpot stays under water I have weighed it down with a rock - problem with this is it gets hot enough in the crockpot to soften the siphon hose so the rock squashs it flat.

We seem to be a scattered buch Seanz but its good to be in contact with some like minded people

I like the glass door too Barg - I find myself going out to shed with a beer and just looking

 

[Knucklehead]

Put something producing smoke inside the kiln and check for leaks around your door seal. If you can force air into it from the ouside somehow, the smoke will go out any openings. It will take very little air pressure to do this. You just need positive air pressure on the inside. If you find and fix your leaks, you will have to start from scratch again on your settings and experiments. With leaks, you won't have consistent, duplicatable results, and your power bill will be higher if you are losing heat.

 

[NZGirl]

I didnt think we had any tobacco specific pests down here. Unless there are ones that like them,

I didn't either Seanz but I found the weirdest biggest looking caterpillar on the top of a leaf a coupla weeks ago. It was a BIG fawny coloured one and had made a spiderwebby cover for itself. I just stabbed with with my trust garden knife and looked for others but didn't see any. My issues are all slug and snail related really