Fan Condensing/dripping Calcium Salts From Humidifier Onto Plant?

[bibbles]

11x13 room, four lights, 1ft walkways around trays, oscillating wall fans centered on three sides, Quest 155 hung in the center, and an ultrasonic humidifier.

I have noticed wet spots under the fan with a large amount of salt crystals in it. Plants which previously hung under the fan had burn spots, and the occasional wet, salty leaf. The fans have never been wet when I've seen the damage, but it must be them, there's some calcium buildup from the humidifier running; however, it doesn't run at night, so why would things be condensing then? I'll be adding an RO mix going forward, super hard water here, should reduce the amount of calcium aerosolized.

Previously, I thought the issue might be the dehumidifier output, as it's in the same area, but I added some deflectors and things continued.

 

[MidwestToker]

What type of humidifier are you running ? Can you give us a little better detail on your daily room environment ?

 

[bibbles]

...an ultrasonic humidifier.

I'm thinking the humidity was getting higher than I imagined at night, so I turned up the Quest by one step; still, odd that things would condense on the fan, especially as the dehumidifier output was previously blowing on them. Perhaps the metal of the cage is just cool enough for the higher than expected humidity to condense?

Day time is ~77F, ~65%RH; caught the humidity at 75% at lights on this morning, my adjustment should bring it down to ~70% at night. Night temps should be around 73F, but I'll need to make sure of this tonight. :)

 

[Jack og]

Hmm! Pls some pics of the setup! I’m curious as heck cause I’ve never experienced what you have seen

 

[bibbles]

Dew point charts should look pretty familiar to those familiar with VPD charts. The night setting for my humidifier is like 35%, so that it does not run; the dehumidifier doesn't have numbers, but changing it by a step did not cause it to run even once during the "day", which, to me, means it should have happened a while ago (no day/night control).

Ultrasonic humidifiers require tap water due to the lack of conductivity in RO, and that shit's like 550ppm where I'm at, and calcium, et al, becomes aerosolized along with the water, which means calcium deposits everywhere. I actually had to change out a Can 75 due to it being fully clogged with calcium (omitted pre-filter, and it was old to begin with; my fault). I need to clean my oscillating fans of these deposits, but the room is almost entirely canopy at this point, so that's going to have to wait. For now, using at least half RO should reduce this, and I can probably aim for 3/4ths, or more, without causing a problem.

What I've seen is wet spots under the fans, on the floor or leaves, wherein there's so much (presumably) calcium that it's formed crystals in the water. The amount of water is tiny, like a wet leaf or two, and about a 4"x4" wet spot at lights on... but, the EC is so high that those leaves are insta-fucked. The fans themselves have never been wet when I've seen them, but I haven't crawled back there at midnight yet. (Been drinking, ain't the time for Spiderman, but tomorrow before lights on I should be up in there, and will take pics.)

Lights off four hours ago, checked in a couple times: 75F, 65-70RH. Veg vents into the flower room, and those lights are currently on, once they go off the temp should drop a bit... RH, I'm less sure about. The lights won't be burning off the veg humidity, but that's tiny, so I think things should stay where they're at.

 

[MidwestToker]

I'm thinking the humidity was getting higher than I imagined at night, so I turned up the Quest by one step; still, odd that things would condense on the fan, especially as the dehumidifier output was previously blowing on them. Perhaps the metal of the cage is just cool enough for the higher than expected humidity to condense?

Day time is ~77F, ~65%RH; caught the humidity at 75% at lights on this morning, my adjustment should bring it down to ~70% at night. Night temps should be around 73F, but I'll need to make sure of this tonight. :)

I run RO water in my ultrasonic humidifier or I'm replacing the disk every 3 months.

 

[bibbles]

The instructions said no RO, because the automatic stop won't detect the water level; plus, it came with extra discs, so I wasn't too concerned. Try putting your discs in white vinegar overnight when they get dirty, this should dissolve any deposits.

To be honest, I'd really like to hook the dehumidifier into the humidifier reservoir, and then run an overflow to the condensate pump which currently handles waste water. I'd almost never need to refill it.

Stuff came up before lights on, so I was not there waiting, but a few hours later I didn't see any wet spots on the floor (restrained plants to avoid wetting them). I think the warm air being put out by the dehumidifier probably increased the temperature differential enough to cause dew at the previous RH setting. The third fan, which is not in this warm air flow, has not appeared to leave wet spots.

 

[sixstring]

i would guess your rh about 30 minutes after lights out is around 90+ % because that is when rh would normally spike.if your seeing 75% just before lights on its prob much higher for the first half of lights out.have your fogger shut down at least an hour before lights out and bring rh to 50% or lower for that last hour,will help with lights out spikes

 

[bibbles]

My initial suspicion of the dehumidifier output is due to the fact that it's significantly oversized for the room. The humidity spikes down when it runs. It's unlikely that the humidity even hits 80%, though I'll take a look shortly to confirm.

The veg situation is still on for the first six hours of flower darkness for this reason as well, since that light should help burn off any excess humidity through that transition (intake and exhaust in flower room). Veg is very small, any spike when that light goes off is likely quite minimal... though, I should probably plan a 3am stakeout to confirm this as well.

I'm using a Titan controller for the humidifier, so it's day/night settings for now. It does not run at night, not even the dehumidifier spikes trigger it (have confirmed). The fan which pushes fog runs 24/7, and this would provide some minimal humidification blowing across the water; I will see if I can make this day-only.

 

[bibbles]

Humidity hit 71% and the dehumidifier tanked it immediately, at about 30 minutes into the dark. The sensor is within the canopy.

 

[Daniewest]

11x13 room, four lights, 1ft walkways around trays, oscillating wall fans centered on three sides, Quest 155 hung in the center, and an ultrasonic humidifier.

I have noticed wet spots under the fan with a large amount of salt crystals in it. Plants which previously hung under the fan had burn spots, and the occasional wet, salty leaf. The fans have never been wet when I've seen the damage, but it must be them, there's some calcium buildup from the humidifier running; however, it doesn't run at night, so why would things be condensing then? I'll be adding an RO mix going forward, super hard water here, should reduce the amount of calcium aerosolized.

Previously, I thought the issue might be the dehumidifier output, as it's in the same area, but I added some deflectors and things continued.

 

[bibbles]

Please consume 100% of the penises.

 

[MidwestToker]

Let me ask a couple of questions.

What is your Intake air temp and humidity like ?
I see the Quest is rated at 155 pints a day @ 60% RH. ( around 20 gallons per day). My room is only 8x12 with only about 1/3rd of it being used for flowering at the moment because of the heat and humidity in my area. Even with my intake air being conditioned to 70 degrees and 60% RH I'm dumping 13 gallons of water from my dehuey a day with a 1/4 of the canopy space you have. Granted, we probably don't have the same conditions as each other but something to think about is the Quest might not be big enough for your canopy size in the room and environment.

 

[bibbles]

I had a similar concern going into the purchase, but the Quest is a low-grain refrigerant unit, which means that it's performance is largely unaffected by changes in temp and RH; I couldn't tell you exactly how it compares to home units in terms of rating, but it absolutely smashes the performance of the two 70 pint Johnnies I had previously.

Additionally, there are two one ton ACs, and the room is sealed. Neither the humidifier nor the dehumidifier run very often, with the former only running with the lights on, and the later only running with the lights off.

I changed over to RO in the humidifier today after discovering why my previous carbon filter clogged; seems to be functioning well! :)

 

[MidwestToker]

I have no doubt that the Quest unit is better than my home dehuey's I run. Just trying figure out why your getting condensation. My tap water is 400 ppm with almost 300 ppm of that as cal-carbonate so I know what the cal-carb deposits do to my pots and fixtures.
Just trying to help you figure this out.

 

[bibbles]

Dew point, coupled with the steel cage's lower than ambient surface temperature. Lowering the night-time humidity seems to have solved the problem. Lowering the night time temp would help as well, but I do not have this capability with my current setup. I'm working with two one ton window units (only option for four lights in this room), and the best I've found is setting them to eco at 73F (maintains 75-79 with the lowest power consumption).

550ppm out the tap over here, but new to the humidifier situation; things were too humid prior to purchasing the Quest, and FYI, the 155 is the same price as the 105. To the cent. The 105 is more efficient, but I plan to grow. The 155 should be good up to 8-10 lights assuming a mini split and sealed room. The 205 is $1,000 more, just buy two 155s.

Electric bill dropped ~$150-250/mo after moving to this unit (dependent on outdoor temp), as it wasn't running constantly like the home units would at night. I ain't trying to show off or take a dig at your shit, I'm trying to share the knowledge I wish I had when I moved out of a tent. A good dehumidifier pays for itself real quick.

 

[bibbles]

And then he fucked himself adding floralicious to the tea flush without thinking. Was pushing what I could, and that unplanned for fulvic burned in hard.

The fools who say flush, they know about doing too much.