Bud dryer - manicured to smoke in 3 days

Mail ordering can get very exxy, particularly for weighty items like media and nutes. I have to drive 200km round trip to my hydro shop, $25-30 worth of petrol in me old ute, but I can buy months' worth of supplies at a time. I only go a few times a year. It'd cost $25 just to get a bag of Fytocell and some nutes out here by courier.

If it's at all possible, you may want to drive to the next town where there IS a hydro shop rather than paying S&H rates.

Some growing methods, while truly most suitable for advanced growers, eliminate all media. Aeroponic systems can be medialess, so you really only need nutes and H2O2. Buy your nutes in 25L jugs and you may only need to go to a hydro shop 1x a year.

The GrowFAQ is as good a place as any for comparative analyses of hydro systems.

Al B. Fuct said:

Mail ordering can get very exxy, particularly for weighty items like media and nutes. I have to drive 200km round trip to my hydro shop, $25-30 worth of petrol in me old ute, but I can buy months' worth of supplies at a time. I only go a few times a year. It'd cost $25 just to get a bag of Fytocell and some nutes out here by courier.

If it's at all possible, you may want to drive to the next town where there IS a hydro shop rather than paying S&H rates.

Some growing methods, while truly most suitable for advanced growers, eliminate all media. Aeroponic systems can be medialess, so you really only need nutes and H2O2. Buy your nutes in 25L jugs and you may only need to go to a hydro shop 1x a year.

The GrowFAQ is as good a place as any for comparative analyses of hydro systems.

Click to expand...

Thanks Al, Ill start reading up. Ive checked into aero and bubble... Looks simple so I may rig something up.

SomeGuy said:

Thanks Al, Ill start reading up. Ive checked into aero and bubble... Looks simple so I may rig something up.

Click to expand...

Be careful- like I said, aero etc are really best for advanced growers with a good understanding of hydroponics. Medialess systems are sensitive to things that those with pots of absorbent media will not be as sensitive to. DWC (bubblers), aero & NFT require close monitoring and control of nute soln strength, pH and temp.

However, DWC/bubble has a particular Achilles heel- it requires a 24/7 air supply to bubble curtains or air stones. A power or air pump failure lasting more than about 4-6 hours can kill every plant in a DWC because the roots are constantly submerged in a nute solution. Loss of aeration, through power or pump failure, is big trouble. Redundant pumps and even backup power for them are not bad ideas for DWC.

The most fault-tolerant systems of all are flood and wick systems. They don't care so much about res temps, but pH & nute strengths still need to be maintained in a range. A water pump in a flood sys can quit but you will still have 24-48 hours to catch it before there's any big problems. Wick systems have no pumps at all.

awesome set up, might try at next harvest

al b... what do you think about using small hempy buckets for a sog? any experience with 'em?

No experience with them, LJI. Their evangelists swear Hempys do not rot roots, but the bottoms of the pots are flooded all the time. Counterintuitive. If you need a pumpless system, a wick is a surer thing IMO.

lumberjack_ian said:

al b... what do you think about using small hempy buckets for a sog? any experience with 'em?

Click to expand...

You planning on going "hempy" LI?
I think I might have the hempy itch also. I planning on trying a couple in the left over spaces in the op i'm assembling.

Irradiate

I gotta say this is the funniest bud dryer conversation I have ever witnessed, preachon Brother Al. Did you notice I finally bought a ph meter. It hasn't been 2 years yet. VV

DaSprout said:

You planning on going "hempy" LI?
I think I might have the hempy itch also. I planning on trying a couple in the left over spaces in the op i'm assembling.

Irradiate

Click to expand...

haha
been doing

and i have not seen any effects of root rot...but i do let the internal "res" mostly dry out before rewatering...


al... once i get enough moms to make enough cuts and am proficient enough at rooting, i'm going to start runs of a true SOG with 0 veg time... as of now i'm vegging out plant 8-12 inches tall then lollypopping them with like 1/sq ft... i'll be sure to let you knwo how it turns out (32 oz. cups filled with perlite hempy style, i'm looking for really simply fairly fault resistent growing here)

my buddy was thinking of rigging up an ebb and flow setup to actually water hempy buckets... filling up the containers through the drainage hole on each and flooding out the same hole when draining... basically setting up an automated watering system for the buckets without messing with drippers that would seem to get clogged easier than a pump used for E&F...
plus the flood would only need to occur every other day or so, because of the internal res' of the hempy buckets...

i dunno whats gonna happen, but i find it quite interesting...
oh, and sorry for the bit of a thread jack...

VictorVIcious said:

I gotta say this is the funniest bud dryer conversation I have ever witnessed, preachon Brother Al. Did you notice I finally bought a ph meter. It hasn't been 2 years yet. VV

Click to expand...

to be honest.... i think i was quite high and fairly confused and thought this was his SOG thread.... whoops

Al B. Fuct said:

No experience with them, LJI. Their evangelists swear Hempys do not rot roots, but the bottoms of the pots are flooded all the time. Counterintuitive. If you need a pumpless system, a wick is a surer thing IMO.

Click to expand...

a wick system require just that though... a wick.... haha

actually i'm interested in setting up a wick cloner and seeing how that works out for me... i'm having a hard time keeping a medium moist without being over wet except for my bubble cloner but thats even a bit shotty and i'm only like 60% with my clones or so....

lumberjack_ian said:

haha

oh, and sorry for the bit of a thread jack...

Click to expand...

cool, but wd be nice if this one went back to being about bud dryers.

Al B. Fuct said:

Fish tank heaters are designed to run immersed in water. If you try to run one outside a tank of water, it'll pop in seconds.

Click to expand...

What about two strips of 11" Flexwatt or a reptile heating pad on the top and bottom of your dryer, along with either a dimmer or a thermostat and a thermometer?

There are heat mats which are designed to be attached to aquariums with adhesive and which don't get too hot. (Generally, these are made of Flexwatt, which is also used for deicing purposes). And I've seen cheap thermostats at pet stores for under $35.

Just a thought, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

The problem with heating pads and the like is that they are designed to transfer heat by contact, with your iguana, for example. They are not designed to transfer the heat they make into air- and won't do it very well.

A bud dryer needs to warm the airstream going through it to reduce its RH & thus make it more able to pick up moisture from the buds. This is why I used a warmed heatsink, which by virtue of its large surface area and fin shape is specifically designed to shift heat into a flowing airmass.

i just made mine with a box and string across the top then a fan in and out and i suck the heat off my monter

Al B. Fuct said:

correction... I just found an old photo of this dryer in operation back in 2000- it has been in use for 7 years.

I don't even want to know how much dope this thing has processed! It would be a whole lot!

I've had as much as 16oz dry weight come out of it in 3 days, all racks loaded to capacity in a single layer.

Click to expand...

you share a lot of info. good stuff. i am gonna try your dryer.

Thanks for that.

I really gotta get off my dead ass and post construction pix of BudDryer v2.0. There's several new features in 2.0, including thermostatic control of the heating module, speed control for the fan motors and filtration of the intake air. I was really surprised how much dust the air filters catch, which previously had likely been getting stuck to the buds' resin.

However, none of the fancy-schmancy stuff is really needed to make a bud dryer. It CAN be as simple as a plastic box with a single fan drawing air out of it, with no heating element. It will work, just nowhere near as fast as with one, probably 6-8 days instead of 3. The air motion alone will help stop mould.

However, warming the inbound air only a few degrees C reduces the relative humidity of the intake air quite a lot. The lower the RH of the intake air, the more moisture the air can pick up on the way through the box. As long as the air warmer is limited thermostatically to 29C, it will have no effect on THC, which begins to break down into non-psychoactive cannabinoids above that temp.

Worth restating at this point in the thread that use of the dryer takes a bit of practise and observation to avoid overdrying. Check it about every 12 hours when first trying out your new dryer.

However, even if you do overdry, it's too easy to put some water back in the buds. Dampen a paper towel with about 1-2 teaspoons of water and nest it in with the buds which have been put in a sealed plastic container. Buds will again be springy and pliable in a few hours. Once the moisture content is where you like it, remove the paper towel.

For smoking, I like my buds on the slightly moister side to slow the burning and smooth out the smoke. For longer term storage, I prefer that they are on the dryer end of the spectrum. However, storage is for some odd reason not a real problem around here.

weedyoo said:

i just made mine with a box and string across the top then a fan in and out and i suck the heat off my monter

Click to expand...

Pretty ghetto, but it'd probably work fine. Put a peak memory thermometer in your box to make sure the air temp is not exceeding 29C.

i am going to try one of your dryer designs. it looks promising. i was looking at the thread where you were discussing the theory of the dryer and its effectiveness. you make plenty of sense and it is definitely worth a shot in my opinion.

when can we expect pics of the v2.0