With my outdoor grow wrapped up, I am back to growing inside until next spring. I set up a grow tent in my basement, and hoping we get some really cold nights this winter so my plants can go purple. But for now I am starting some new seedlings, and they need lots of humidity to grow.
With a few successful grows in the tent I have been finding things I can do better and fix inside the tent. One of them is the humidifier setup. This equipment is crucial to seedlings, without high humidity plants that have not formed roots yet have to get their water from the air. I can add lots of humidity to a tent using reptile foggers. But sometimes that much water causes mold to start growing. So I need to find a balance between getting the humidity I need and keeping the fungus at bay. It can live in the soil but needs to not get airborne, as later on that can mess up my flowers.
Normally I just clean the tent good as I see it form, and keeps it at bay for months. But long term I need a better plan.
The big problem with the humidifiers is how they pour the water vapor into the grow tent. It tends to hit the ceiling of the tent and then fall down, towards the fan inside the tent. This causes the vapor to be pulled through the fan, and is making mold grow on the blades of the fan. Not good..
So I needed to find a way to stop the vapor from going in the direction of the fan. As I need this fan to help circulate the air inside the tent and a steady light breeze makes the stems of the plants stronger since it stimulates them.
We can see the dripping of the humid air hitting the ceiling and then coming down the side of the tent, we do not want this. I have very few ways I can move the fogger tubing around. As if I do not keep it mostly straight up water forms in the tubes dips and stops the vapor from coming out.
That is the fan that gets the humid air pulled through, and is growing mold on it. I already took it apart and cleaned it the best I could. But I ordered some new fans just to replace these.
My solution is to move one of my intake fans up on top of the tent, and blow air directly on the fogger nozzles. Blowing the humid air in the opposite direction of where the fan is hopefully the mildew will stop growing.
Honestly its not good to keep fans on ground level of the tent. They get more debris inside them from walking by kicking up dust. So moving it up high I will not need to replace its filters as much.
Opening up the vent hole on top we can see inside.
After removing the 8 inch vent from the bottom tent hole I closed it up. And then moved this fan up top and worked the tubing inside the tent.
Using some paracord I tied the tube to some of the framing inside the grow tent.
GIF animation
Works great, I moved the fan to the other side of the tent. And watching the vapor it now appears not to be pulled into the fan now. Hopefully this will break up the water vapor better and keep the mildew at bay.