@misfitdad @Gizmo613 @mothy @MIGrampaUSA @Diverge @Backyard_Boogie @misfitdad @PahPahCee
Firstly Happy thanksgiving to those who celebrate hope you guys are having good holidays.
Sorry to pester all but I'm struggling a little with my fridge & hoping the wine cooler corp could help me out a lil.
I thought everything was good till I walked in on my fridge and it was 72f instead of 60f as the humidifier was working too hard (3% buffer) so I dropped it to 1% buffer to chill.
Keeping it on 60/60 with fresh nugs makes it work too hard.
@PahPahCee I believe you said you drop it by 1% a day or something right? But can I ask what's the normal max Rh when you load the fridge, I found mine go into the 70s quick and already lost my 1st plant to mould so trying to avoid it back to back.
Can I ask you guys what you normally keep your temp/Rh on when you load the fridge and how long it usually takes to finish drying, it would help me alot?
I hear some ppl will keep it dead around 60/60 but I'm speaking to other growers online who grow some wicked flowers and they say they drop it to 50-55 first couple days and also 45-50 last day. Does anyone have any experience with this as I've heard the first few days are always crucial with humidity. And I wonder how much of this matters if your drying in a room vs a small fridge
Thank you all for your kindness and patience have a good one
Hey dude! Sorry I haven’t been online. I also seem to not get alerts when I get tagged.
I don’t agree with the immediate 60/60 environment when I’m using the fridge. Mainly for the reasons you’re experiencing with the heat raising past desirable temps. I also suggest making sure the fridge is level or at a slight angle to make sure the condensation funnels to the drain. You shouldn’t have much sitting water if any.
For this example let’s assume we are talking about a full loaded fridge. I buck the fresh nugs and do a quick trim. Load the shelves up. I cram them in there but I try to keep in mind airflow. The idea is to avoid “micro climates” where air can’t flow.
Once the fridge is loaded I set my fridge to the lowest temperature and turn my inkbird/Dehum to 99%, so it doesn’t turn on at all for the first 12-24 hours. (Don’t worry, the fridge is still on keeping the air moving while pulling moisture.)
After the 12-24 hours the humidity should stop raising and stabilize. Congrats you found your baseline. Usually mine hits 70-85%. (Make sure no nugs are touching the inkbird sensor and that the sensor is out of the way since the condensation drips down the back wall.)
time to set the inkbird/Dehum to turn on. If my RH is at 75% I will set my inkbird to 74%. Roll up a joint and watch the controller while monitoring the the internal temperature of the fridge. I try to keep my temperature as close to 60F throughout the whole process. If the fridge starts warming up too much then I back off, and raise the inkbird/Dehum setting to make it not work as hard.
I think of it as a cycle, the Dehum turns on and off and you can watch the RH lower and rise back up before the cycle restarts.
After the first 1-3 days I like to go back into the fridge and kind of lazily rotate my nugs around. The nugs will have noticeable shrank already and I like to reorganize the shelves so I can fit even more in. I tend to spend 2-4 days loading my fridge. If you reorganize the shelves after the nugs shrink you can really cram a lot in (I get 1lb dry in my large wine fridges).
honesty, I don’t stick to a hard and fast rule. Sometimes you can drop the RH faster. Sometimes I forget about it for a day or two. The only thing I really stay on top of is the temperature. Once I hit 62% RH I stop lowering it. I let stay in the fridge for a few days or longer until I am sure it’s actually stabilized at 62%.
I use one of those wood moisture meters to double check it. I then bag them up in
grove bags or jars and throw a RH hydrometer into a few bags so I can monitor them. If it goes above 62% I will put it back in the fridge.
Tips from other users:
Hang dry the plant for the first two days if you really want to speed things up. Cannatrol recommends this and people have reported good results with this method.
Others have their end goal be lower than 62%. 58% being the lowest you should try to hit.
Make sure you calibrate your inkbird sensor beforehand.
If you want that 5 day dry that Cannatrol offers they achieve this by allowing the internal temp to get very very hot. I don’t recommend this personally because they have different goal.
The fridge will only lower 20F of the ambient temperature of the room the fridge is in.