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VPD?

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VPD?

ImANDINGO 3 Replies 2,867 Views
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ImANDINGO

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Hello everyone. I have been punching myself in the dick for the past week trying to figure out WTF is going on in my room... let me bring you up to speed.

I run a sealed (extremely sealed) 8000 watt flower room. It has a 25,000 btu a/c unit, compressed co2, a dehumidifier, and a heater all controlled by a Sentinel CHHC-4 climate controller. I have 12 Air King wall mount fans for plenty of air movement. I recently harvested the whole room and had it empty for a few days. So as always I cleaned top to bottom with 10% bleach/water solution. While empty I also did some maintenance... added a new coat of dutch boy floor paint (same as used when the room was built), switched out my old 25000 btu a/c unit (that had a broken fan blade) for a new SoleusAir 25000 btu unit from Menards, and upgraded to a Original can 100 carbon filter from a can 50. So, basically its the same as before.

I have flowered in this room for 8 months without any problems, actually with amazing results. I let the room chill with the door open to air out for 2 days after finishing my maintenance. Everything seem to be great so I fired the room up as usual and turned my Lumatek's down to 600 watts with the intention of moving my new crop into the room, vegging for a week more under HPS to get over any possible light shock and then flipping it. I set the CHHC-4 to 74 degrees, 800 ppm of co2 and 60% RH. 12 hours after moving a healthy crop (that ranges in age from 1-2 months old, various strains, and on different feeding schedules) into the room every single plant looked over-watered/under-watered and extremely unhealthy. They basically closed up on themselves. Typically I don't experience any stress when moving in new plants. Most came from 1000 watt MH that was dimmed to 750 and a few were under two 8 bulb fixtures of t-5's. I decided to wait a day or two and see if they come around. After running for three days I noticed the RH staying down around 30-35% so I added a humidifier to the controller bringing the RH to 55-60 consistently. This helped a little bit, but still nothing looked healthy.

I had a good friend from the farm come over and brain storm with me. He mentioned VPD witched seemed like a possible candidate, but with the RH now in check that makes my VPD 1.12 kpa. witch is in a healthy range. My runoff ph and ppm both seem to be fine. I assure you they are not over/under watered. So, here I am at 5am writing a thread... been up all night continuing to research. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Here are the some pictures of the sorry sad sacks that are in the room and what they have done. they are still drinking at the same rate they should be. About every other day.

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This plant I just moved in two days ago as a test, It didn't close up like the others. But it had a little light shock coming from the t-5 and I feel like it is starting to take on the dry, twisted leaf.

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These pictures below are plants that I moved into the flower room and collapsed. So I moved them back out under the t-5's and they came back around within 12 hours or so... still not healthy. But better than fully collapsed upon itself.

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These pictures are of plants that haven't ever been in the flower room, but I feel like they are slowly taking on the start of the same problem... twisted, dry, and droopy.

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To a moderator... It was 5am when I posted this thread and I forgot to change the title before I submitted it. I would like it to say "Twisted, Dry, Droopy leaves. Please help!" to get more attention. If you could change the title it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks-
 
The floor paint is the first thing that catches my eye...

How long after painting the first time did you introduce plants? Any problems then?

How long the second? Was the paint formula changed between your paintings?

Is there any way to vent the grow space with fresh air for a bit to see if that helps?

If your grow style, grow media, temps and RH didnt change much from previous successful runs Id look at what has changed. The AC system and the paint.

Im no expert tho, still just a noob.
 
I have never run a sealed room, CO2 or the like. It's interesting, because a range at or near 1.11 is where most of my ladies seem happiest. So, is it the CO2 that's making a difference here? Certainly could be, would make sense to me.

I ran your VPD through an online calculator and came up with 1.14, higher than what I usually run, but only slightly. What seems to shift VPD values back down toward the ideal range isn't raising temps as much as it is raising RH, according to the calculator.

Btw, while I do see what are signs of problems with the VPD conditions in some of those plants, I see others that aren't. The twisted leaves with the crepey texture are a sign that the plant isn't happy with pH ranges of media and/or feed. The reddened petioles say there's a problem with available P utilization. I see others that are showing clear signs of Mg-, and still others that are showing the first signs of a K problem.

If you've always seen these things and are able to work with them, then do what you do. The VPD seems to respond best to a shift upward of RH or a shift downward of temperature. Kind of counteracts what you're trying to do with the CO2, so that's making me think it needs to be accounted for in the calculations, hell if I can tell you how. But your calculations aren't far off at all.

If nothing else except the clean-out and painting of the room has changed and you're suddenly seeing problems, then I'd have to say Cort's right and you need to look to off-gassing or similar issues with the paint.

PS--on a sterilization level, isopropyl alcohol is more effective than bleach. Or, something like Physan 20 is good, too, and lasts longer as an antimicrobial to boot.
 
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