Nice work !!! Love it… you will be impressed with the quality you get back. And never worrying about what’s happening when your not there during drying is Awsome… not losing additional grow space to dry speeds up the turnaround aswell.
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Your tech skills seem pretty good to me lol… I’m still figuring out how you cut copy paste, etc. Your reply’s are always proper. Still learning the ropes on OG format. You are a rock star around here !!! Thank you Sir.
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I will be chopping today and loading my dryer. I have also recently got another version of the same fridge just for long term storage while the dryer is in use. I can post my dry and cure seetings for this run on this thread for those interested. Will update after trim jail when I am ready to start the dryer later today with starting point RH ect. Cheers !!!
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One thing I’ve been wondering is why the need for a standalone dehu? I mean look at that back evap coil, it gets cold to cool the fridge which condenses the warm air. Isn’t it in itself a dehu? I’d assume this would be the same on the thermoelectric coolers…the fins on the heat sinks connected to the peltier would get cold and condense the air thus forming water droplets as it pulls moisture out. Do the cannatrol units
have seperate dehu’s?
If my assumption is true, is there not away to collect the water from the evap coil?
Also, I believe a peltier will cool or heat based on polarity. So, you could switch the polarity and cool or heat with one peltier right?
I’m hearing that compressor based units pull too much out compared to the peltier ones. Does anybody have first hand working knowledge of both and how they compared to the end product in the same environment settings?
If using a compressor based unit then why not get a small office fridge?
How does this compare to the kitchen fridge and the lotus cure, I believe the kitchen fridge is frost free so it pull moisture out on it’s heat cycle.
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I thought the dehu got cold to pull water out of hot air. Don’t the large compressor based dehu get cold not hot? I was under the assumption that cold air didn’t hold much moisture.
I was watching a youtube video on a simulator peltier dehu and it got cold.
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This is what I was saying, the AC infinity 79 pro is almost perfect …but I don’t believe it can step down or up over days…I think it’s fairly static. It needs more controlled outlets to. It would be awesome to have them build us a controller that could start at specific temp / rh and then step down or up over a time period at user defined percentages. So, first few days step down at 1% then .5 percent after a week or so. But, also use it’s sensors to step or down temp and humidity as needed for a target range customer defined with a ramp…soft of full on.
I think this is where the price comes in for the commerical unit.
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You are correct about dehumidifier’s in general. Onside is warming the air slightly other end is the fins that cool and collect the moisture. This moisture drips into the dehumidifier collection resivor. In my version and many others we take apart the dehumidifier to make it smaller no need for resivor because we place the fins to drip into the fridge moisture collection system. The fridge has a built in water collection system and drip tray on bottom of fridge. The dehumidifier is signaled to come on when our INKBIRD RH controler reach’s our preset RH max this raises the temp in the fridge slightly when RH climbs above our preset number. The rise in temp signals the fridge it’s time to push cold air through the fridge. This air is cold set to your temp on fridge but it’s also very dry immediately cycling dry cool through the fridge . We repeat this process over and over slowly drying but the fridge dose all the drying the dehumidifier just signal the fridge to cycle more or less times per hour. This will dry faster or slower depending on your settings. You are correct any RH controls will do this function. Some have WiFi control options allowing for remote control of your drying. Cheers !!!
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You are correct here aswell… other threads I have followed in other sites had guys working on programs and what controllers would work best for this. I was more of gotta get this running now and fine tune it as we go. But we are drying so much slower now with this that you can actually start to see trends in the cycles on my goove monitor allowing you to see the overall recipe you used. I will work on posting that. I’m in trim jail now getting the dryer loaded !!! Cheers!!!
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Excellent explanations!
Cheers
G
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Wouldn’t it be more efficient if the dehu was mounted in such a way the hot side was outside the box so that hot air isn’t being added into the chamber? As in mount it like the thermoelectric coolers where the hot side of the peltier is outside.
Frankly, It’s confusing why they are needed at all since it’s already condensing with the original cooling condenser which is why the fridges have built in drainage from the factory…I suppose you need just more condensing as we’re throwing in wet organic material not soda cans.
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Has anyone tried drying in just a normal fridge, is it possible? I keep a rack of salted steaks in the fridge and they age nicely for a few days and taste much better than when fresh but they lose a lot of moisture. So a normal fridge would draw moisture from fresh buds even without airflow or a dehumidifier, and the lower temps would inhibit any mould. Just wondering if anyone has tried it, or freeze drying in a freezer??
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Yes, It’s called the lotus cure. I believe the fridge has to be frost free just like curing in the freezer so humidity is removed. Most small fridges are not FF from my research.
Also, freezer or fridge…make sure it’s just for curing as any food will absorb the smell and be ruined.
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That’s interesting, thank you, I’ll have a search for lotus curing. I’m pretty sure my fridge/freezer is frost free, I’ve never defrosted it.
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We use the small dehumidifier to raise temps slightly inside the wine fridge. This minor rise in temps turns on the wine fridge cooling system. We use this to cycle the fridge more or less times per hour. Basically the only reason for the dehumidifier is control how many cycles per hour the wine fridge cooling system will do per hour. We don’t use the dehumidifier as a dehumidifier in this set up. We use it more for the amount of cycles per hour. The fridge does all of the drying and dehumidification inside of the fridge. Interestingly, with some of these new controllers You may be able to use VPD or something like that. I have not looked into any of this yet, but lots of different ways to measure And control different environmental aspects. I do believe this will help us Gain more control over our drying and curing.
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The lotus method works good for regular fridge drying and curing. The trick to this is to control the RH. To do this most people use paper bags or cardboard pizza boxes to control and slow down the drying or curing inside the regular fridge. Regular refrigerator run very cold and very dry. This will cause your drying to speed way up. This is the reason why cardboard boxes and bags are used. It raises the RH around the curing bud and slowly drying in a more controlled environment. You could slow down your drying for a few weeks in a regular fridge with Lotus method. If you just throw your bud in the refrigerator, it would probably dry in 48 hours too quickly.
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I see. I was just thinking that sometimes you might not want the heat and sometimes you do. I was thinking of mounting the hot side outside the box and inside using a cheap 100W bulb on a controller to add heat as needed.
Overthinking probably, but I worked in IT for over 30 years so it’s a occupational hazard.
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Hell yeah… I love new ideas. We are basically just getting started on these sorts of machines. They can definitely be improved on. With all the different controllers out there now, Along with a lot of people becoming very tech savvy for programming, etc. Feels like now is the time for more drying and curing testing. Cheers !!!
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Nice work !!! Very cool have not seen this before !!!
So here is the current dryer run. I spent most of last night in trim jail loading up the dryer. I set the INKBIRD RH controller to 72 RH last night as a starting point. I kept on eye on the fridge cycles when I first loaded it. 72 is aggressive and could cause the fridge to run constantly. 73 is a safer starting point to start drying with out risk of over running your fridge. But we are trying to get out of danger zone anything above 68 RH for too long grows mold. I like to be at 68 in 3 or 4 days. So I set to 72 this time and monitor the cycles making sure we have down time between cycles. If the RH is set too low on the INKBIRD the dryer will run constantly drying things way too fast. I started the dryer at midnight last night. You can see on my Goove monitor the cycles started at 0:00 that’s midnight on the goove monitor. As we keep adding to this data logger on the goove you can step back and see trends per hour then per day then per week. I will update this as we go. Just to show this particular recipe and pattern.
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We could just build our own, the peltier modules are all over aliexpress. Heatsinks usa has lots of heat sinks we can customize the size. They also have dew point or vapor pressure sensors as well, we could put that into a circuit.
For the heat sinks we have the below.
for ex. 2.000" Wide Extruded Aluminum Heatsink | HeatsinkUSA
We could then design a small and slimline 3d enclosure or shroud that makes it efficient and expels the hot air…with a drain channel and tube to route the water outside the fridge.
or just the sensors.
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