Contributed by: InjectTruth Submitted: January 17th, 2005
Well, after months of deliberating how to dry stealthily, I decided to make my own version of Quickgrow’s Herb Dryer, which they sell for $365!
PHASE 1 : The Plan
The drier is just a Rubbermaid with a carbon filter in it, with a fan sucking air through the filter and out of the cab. My only question was the type of fan used/CFM rating/etc. I discovered the pro-built boxes use only a cheap little muffin fan.
PHASE 2 : Gather Materials
In total this cost me about $55-60:
Rubbermaid container (about $15).
Inline fan - $22
scrubber - parts- $25,
carbon- $10
electrical cord - from a power strip (thanks, Dub.)
shelves and mounts - hardware cloth leftover from scrubber plans and screws I had laying around.
I had to decide which fan and filter to use. Well, after seeing prices on fans and filters, I was discontent. I came upon the SunScrubber, which I?m sure many of you are endearingly familiar with, and I knew it was right. Not so much because its sleek and bad as hell, but because its cheap and customizable.
While on the Home Depot trip to pick up scrubber materials, I was looking at their selection of inline fans. They had 4" - 80cfm, 6" - 250cfm, and 8" - 500cfm. I grabbed the 4" (80 cfm) because my scrubber uses a 4" opening, and because I believe 250 cfms is too much for this purpose. It cost $21.99. The 250cfm was only $24.99.
PHASE 3 : Construction
First, I constructed my scrubber. See this link for details:
DIY Pro-Style Compact Carbon Filter/Scrubber >$50 (by Sun is Shining)
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I traced a circle around my inline fan to mark where it would be placed on the Rubbermaid. Using a butter knife and a lighter (the absolute worst way to do this) I cut a hole to snuggly fit my inline fan.
The fan was pushed through, with the fan blowing out of the box. The scrubber was slipped right onto the fan.
The drying racks: for this, I stuck some 3" screws through the sides to act as rails, on top of which is placed appropriately sized sheets of hardware cloth, which were left over from the scrubber. I will be utilizing 3 trays, approx. 3" apart vertically, giving me a little under 12 ft2 drying area.
I drilled a bunch of little holes in the lid for intakes. If these holes become an odor leak during the trial run, I will remedy this by purchasing a replacement odor stop furnace filter sheet, and place it over the holes, on the inner side of the lid.
How does it work?
I have run the first test with this machine and it has passed with flying colors. It dried the small white rhino buds from my 125w cfl grow in 2 days. They were crispy, but after being in the jar overnight, they have regained some pliability.
Also, no odor was detected from the drying process. The room even seemed a little fresher.
[Editor’s note: it is easy and worthwhile to put the fan on a dimmer to slow down the rpm’s and make drying a little slower. For best results, hook the fan up to a humidistat to dial in your relative humidty to a desired r.h.%]