First off I'd like to say what an awesome dryer you have built. The idea of adding some heat to remove humidity is excellent.
thanks.
I have built a similar dryer, but with only air outake, via a inline duct fan connected to a somewhat large carbon filter, inside the rubbermaid container. Air was drawn through the top of the container by leaving a 2 inch gap by raising the lid on the container.
I'm sure that'll work to some degree, but I organised mine to have a cross-flow to assure moving air was flowing around all buds:
Note that the R value figs in this dwg are for a previous revision of he dryer.
The problem was air temp dictated how long the buds would dry and humidity.
Yep, several other ppl have told me that they've built dryers with fans only and their experiences are similar to yours. It usually takes about 6-8 days with no added heat instead of 3 days.
You are using muffin fans and I was wondering, if I redo my box, is the inline duct fan to much air outake if I use the smaller muffin fans as intake ?
Without knowing the CFM capacity of your fans, I can't say. However, if you have two unequal sized fans, it's better to have the smaller one on the intake.
You don't really need a wind tunnel to dry buds but I'm getting good results with good quality 120mm axial muffin fans for line voltage (240V around here), which do shift a fair amount of air (~100CFM). 12V computer fans are a bit small but will work.
I still plan on using the carbon filter, but on the outside of the box, so the in line fan would be blowing through the filter, which is made from ac and heating duct pipes, and blows out a window.
If you're using a filter, and have dissimilar sized fans, it's that much more important to use the smaller one on the intake. This will keep the box at negative pressure, assuring all air leaving the box is going through your filter instead of via air leaks in the box. If you keep the box at negative pressure, if there's any leaks, they'll leak inward.
And do you leave space between buds, when placing them on the racks ? You mentioned somewhere that you have dried up to a pound in it, and my container is a 31 gallon container, with built in chicken wire racks, and a pound seems like a lot of bud on the racks. Would buds touching produce mold even with the heat and air flow ?
If there's air motion, there won't be any mould. It's plenty to have the buds just laid out in a single layer, they can touch without any trouble.