I got Tupperware dished that I will drop into snug holes I will cut in the bottom. They are sprayed with multiple coats of black plastic fusion paint and will be covered inside with emergency blanket to make them as opaque as possible. These will add an additional 2 inches in height as well as catch excess moisture. I will paint the inside with plumbers white paint to waterproof and add reflectivity. I will apply emergency blanket mylar to the inside where I can as well to make it reflect even more.
Intake is gonna be that Cougar 120mm fan mounted inside the ducting you see in pic. For exhaust I haven’t solved yet. I can DIY a charcoal filter with what I have laying around and already run a HEPA in the garage when I am in it so won’t be out of place. The wall it will back up to has an air gap and feeds up to attic so I can duct it up there and tie into the dryer duct about 7 inches away.
Got 3 knockoff solstrips(sorry @Baudelaire) I ordered on eBay when they do the 15% off coupon and I lowballed the guy with a best offer and he bit. So about 13 bux each on those. And a 5000k solstrip. Plan to add a 5th whenever I can get a 185h-24a driver cheap like I did my 150h-24a. Right now I plan to use the 150 on 4 strips so I can just run the driver flat out maxxed. Still working on mounting but I will visit Goodwill and re-store this week I am sure I will find something aluminum and flat. All else fails I will go to restaurant supply and pick up an aluminum baking sheet. Got tons of computer heatsink and fans so I got heat dissipation covered and the lights will be underdriven slightly anyway so less heat to deal with.
Progress… It is now the same height as my work bench so it will really be inconspicuous… building the outer dimensions before I plan cables lights too much. Wanna see how much space I am gonna end up with
Short update. Got a little more work in. Gonna end up with 24 vertical inches on a 24x 19 box for inner dimension of usable space. I have 3-5 inches of extra vertical for lights and an insulation layer against the garage floor for winter
I started in the garage, ended up killing a couple sprouts… was extremely hard for me to maintain temperature and humidity in the Oklahoma summer… so ended up moving it into the house, was easier to maintain.
On cooling I have a few options. I have a thermoelectric network cooling unit for network racks and cabinets… it’s good for about 10 -20 degrees difference on air charge. I am also thinking of running intake to pull ambient air from inside the house. So if my house air is 75 ish then I should have plenty of control with the thermoelectric cooler to knock the air temp down. For humidity, I have a few ideas there as well. If I intake from inside, the ambient humidity in my home is 50ish %. So I have a decent baseline to start from. I can probably pickup a little desktop dehumidifer unit and modify the collector so I don’t have to empty as often.
I was looking into using TEC for a drying box at one point. Abandoned the project due to the inefficiency of the units available at the time. Though I did see a nice cigar humidor using them.
Also, FYI, turns out most the desktop dehumidifier units are also TEC based.
Started to build the frame for the light. The space on the end is for the 5th strip that I am adding down the road. For now 150 watts of lm561 should get me started.
