Anybody growing mushrooms willing to talk???

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
Taping some of the more expensive allergen/mold rated 20" x 1-2" furnace filters up to a cheap box fan works pretty good for general scrubbing of a room. Check out DIY corsi-rosenthal boxes for more effeciency. Not really true hepa.. but test prove the cheap box fan filters scrub like 90% or more of the overall air particulates out of a room. Even better than the smaller single hepa type air purifiers, simply due to having like 30 times the filter surface area, and way more air flow. I make and use them all the time. Having a few of them running constantly outside the clean tent would keep the majority of dust off your stuff in the room, and help basically double filter your main flow hoods pre-filter, and keep the main filter extra clean & lasting for years. Save you the small fortune of buying extra hepa rated units to try and clean the whole room to lab standards.. That does sound nice though!

I think you could get away with just strapping an FFU to the side of the tent, and work with that as is. Instead of swirling the same air around inside, make it blow all the way through and exhuast out the other side, so it flows through in one direction through the whole tent with positive pressure....

As far as the inline carbon filters go, i'm pretty sure that eventually they build up and start releasing whatever crud right back into the air. At least in aquarium\water filtration setups that is the case, so not sure I would trust them not to shoot out PM spores or whatever back into the air around your cultures\grow space.. especially a used one that was around plants, etc..
Right, I have used the inline and carbon filter for exhausting the tent with plants in it. So i'm sure there's tons of mold spores already in there.
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
So this new LC I made is colonizing super quick. I'm seeing growth after two days. Something that always happens is when I Inoculate Jars The first growth I usually see is a big white ball of Mycelium on the very top of the bird seed. Usually I I just try to shake around the top of the bird seed To break up that ball and leave the bottom undisturbed To colonize. Do you guys have this happen to you? And what do you do?
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
If working inside a large grow tent, just mount a couple of FFUs up top(or wherever?), and you basically have a portable clean room!
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I've been looking around and it does look like a lot of people use FFU's as a flow hood. So I'm wondering if I could just buy a 24"×48" FFU. It would be something I can work in front of and Run To filter the air in the tent or in the room. Could you give me an example of an FF UI could use just for that? I've been looking at things that look like this->

ITW-FLO-FFU42H14_4X2_FFU_Angled_1500.png
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Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Yeah that kind of FFU should work good. That one looks pretty thick, and all painted up nice! I hear the cheapest amazon special units work fine too, but probably have lower quality components overall, like a lower HEPA rating for the filter, and chincier plastic fan blades for example..

I wonder if it would be worth it to make some kind TV like wall mount arm, that allows you to move the FFU up or down, and also rotate it 90 degrees above the worktop if you wanted, so you can use tall bags with no problem. Then spin it back down so its wider again when done with the bags, etc..
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
Yeah that kind of FFU should work good. That one looks pretty thick, and all painted up nice! I hear the cheapest amazon special units work fine too, but probably have lower quality components overall, like a lower HEPA rating for the filter, and chincier plastic fan blades for example..

I wonder if it would be worth it to make some kind TV like wall mount arm, that allows you to move the FFU up or down, and also rotate it 90 degrees above the worktop if you wanted, so you can use tall bags with no problem. Then spin it back down so its wider again when done with the bags, etc..
Oh ya I'll definitely build some type of mount for it. I have A nice work table I'd be able to set it on and do work in front of Using it as a flow hood., And want to hang it somewhere Also to use as a f f u.
 
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7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
Your corn is still a little undercooked tho. I find that it works best when the kernels have just slightly burst but then again, if you are using it as spawn it should work fine. That's pretty quick. What temp?
About 77° for the colonizing tubs in the tent and the grain jars. I have Tower oscillating space heater In the room stays a little bit warmer than inside the tent for some reason. I think it's just because it's really cold outside. It's kind of been pissing me off lately. I Set it at 77 because it has a 5 degree temperature swing When turning on and off.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
About 77° for the colonizing tubs in the tent and the grain jars. I have Tower oscillating space heater In the room stays a little bit warmer than inside the tent for some reason. I think it's just because it's really cold outside. It's kind of been pissing me off lately. I Set it at 77 because it has a 5 degree temperature swing When turning on and off.

Then that's a pretty quick growth huh.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
I've been looking around and it does look like a lot of people use FFU's as a flow hood. So I'm wondering if I could just buy a 24"×48" FFU. It would be something I can work in front of and Run To filter the air in the tent or in the room. Could you give me an example of an FF UI could use just for that? I've been looking at things that look like this->

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Is that laminar? Remember that it is the smooth flow of air that keeps particulates out of your work. Turbulence will invite contamination on plates and such.
 

Aeroknow

Well-Known Member
@7L!fTeD24
This is laminar air flow. Not too strong not too weak.
Too strong, contams can drop down and from around and into the flow of filtered air. Too weak, contams can drop down and and into the flow too.
Right at about 100 feet per minute is considered laminar air flow.

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Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Yeah, you wouldn't want to just inflate the tent or room with positive hepa pressure, and figure its good to work in like that. You would still want to work right in the laminar flow coming out of the FFU or hood, within a a foot or so from the filter. Yep, most FFUs are made to put out around 100cfm.. a little more without the prefilters on. I still think even with positive pressure its a good thing to scrub the whole room though even with one extra hepa unit/FFU, as long as it doesn't interfere with the flow from the main work hood , which it shouldn't. Clean rooms use a crap load of FFUs to blow down from the ceiling, and actually do achieve true laminar flow through the whole room with that many going at once. They still put flow hoods in the same clean room though.

Having a single large FFU either ducted in or ported right through the wall in the tent won't produce laminar flow all the way through, but the positive pressure will keep the tent from sucking in more contams through all the zippers and cracks. Even though it will be slightly turbulent, it will still flow good enough to vent the whole tent with filtered air going one way, which would likely be out and behind through one of the vents.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
@7L!fTeD24
This is laminar air flow. Not too strong not too weak.
Too strong, contams can drop down and from around and into the flow of filtered air. Too weak, contams can drop down and and into the flow too.
Right at about 100 feet per minute is considered laminar air flow.

View attachment 5358005

And of course the actual name. No turbulence, if you have a near perfect hole in a container of water (or emanating from a pump) the water will flow out as a perfect cylinder of water all the way to the end. That is laminar flow. Any rough edge in the hole will introduce that turbulence. Now imagine this with fluid particles following smooth paths in layers, with each layer moving smoothly past the adjacent layers with little or no mixing.

At low velocities, the fluid tends to flow without lateral mixing, and adjacent layers slide past one another like playing cards. There are no cross-currents perpendicular to the direction of flow, nor eddies or swirls of fluids.
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
I have sheets Of Adhesive micron filter That came with some filter discs for jar lids I ordered. When pressure cooking my substrate in oven bags before spawning it to tubs I'd like to take The extra precaution And Make filter patches for the turkey bags. Can't hurt right? So how would I go about Applying the filter patch? I bucket tek A 650 g brick of Coco and 8 cups of vermiculite and load it all in 1 large oven bag Before pressure cooking. So the bag is pretty full I fold the top-down once about half way down the bag and tape it, So would I place the filter patch higher up on the bag to release air, Or lower on the side so water doesn't drip on it. I feel like either way it would get wet. I may have the wrong idea in my head on how to fold the bags with patches, I haven't used them yet.
Here's the adhesive filter paper I can make filter patches out of->
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Also on shroomery I saw some people Cut the top off of a bottle And cut a hole in the cap and screw it on to the top of the bag And put polyfill in the hole like so.i have a bag of polyfill. I copied the pic from shroomery->
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I mainly just want to make sure that I'm Not doing More harm than good when pressure cooking my substrate In These oven bags after the bucket tek. Don't want any contaminants coming in the unsealed bag While waiting for it to cool down. So maybe I could try to seal the flap A little better with something If I have a filter to release the air.
 
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7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
After reading your guys' knowledge about filtration and positive and negative pressure in the tent I realized a few things. I started having the big issues with contamination when I turned my window ac unit in the room off and turned the space heater on. The air conditioner was pulling air from the room And blowing cool air in I don't know if this was causing positive or negative pressure inside the tent, But it was working at the time even with carpet in the room. When I turned the Oscillating tower space heater on I'm Sure, it was blowing a lot of air inside the tent through the zippers and seams Even though it's closed up. Especially With the carpet In the room holding millions of spores And it probably picking them up and pushing them through all the cracks in the tent. I'm sure tearing the carpet out will help a lot But I'm sure it's still Pushing some bad stuff Through those same cracks and seams. It's a 4x8 tent in a 10x10 room With the door Kept shut. I keep the space heater off the floor on a bucket And it Oscillates, but I don't have it blowing right at the tent. It blows alongside the front, but not directly at it. Keeping the door open would probably help all the air from blowing in the cracks But I don't want any contaminants from the room next to it Coming in either especially because I have a dog And I'm vacuuming up dog hair daily. Regardless I'm getting a flow hood and/or a couple FFU's buts it's gonna be about 3 weeks before I can afford them. So I still have a little bit of time to shop around and gather a little bit more knowledge about them And figure out exactly what I need. You guys have been a big help For me getting an understanding of how They work and how they're used And the use of positive and negative Air flow. Now it's just figuring out what to buy and how to put them to use.
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