Orchids in the Mist (King) - Orchid Board

lycaonpictus · #1 10-10-2012, 01:18 PM

Ah, humidity (specifically, the lack thereof)! The bane of all northern orchid growers in the winter.

So I successfully set up the Orchid Case of the Gods, which I bought from the talented and wonderfully thorough ocelaris. I love this case! It’s exactly the right size for me and my tolumnia, and was so thoughtfully designed that the only thing I’ve altered is to put the occasional hook on the outside to ziptie power cords to.

One of the wonderful design elements ocealaris built into the case is a humidistat-driven fogging system. A five-gallon bucket of RO water houses an ultrasonic mister, with a muffin fan to blow the resulting mist up a tube into the case. Works like a dream! I can set the humidistat to whatever relative humidity I want, and the fan-fogger system automatically kicks on and off to keep things reasonably steady.

The only downside is that I’ve burned through at least three ultrasonic foggers so far! I started with the little 1-disc models. They worked fine, but had to run almost continually to produce the necessary humidity. I could float two in the reservoir, which helped, but that was pretty much it as far as expansion. So I graduated to the big 5-disc models. These were PERFECT! Great amounts of mist, filled the whole case quickly. The first one I got simply ceased working for no apparent reason after a few months; the manufacturer kindly replaced it. The second one worked for maybe another 6 months, then ALSO stopped working. This time, though, it had horrible corroded spots around some of the discs. I managed to clean it up, seal the corrosion, replace some discs, and it worked for maybe another week. I can only conclude that the sort of on-off usage required to keep a big orchid case at humidity is just too much for something designed to make fountains in restaurant lobbies look pretty.

Still, these puppies are expensive enough that I can’t be replacing them every 6 months! Not to mention my poor orchids suffering the feast and famine of great humidity / no humidity whenever a fogger breaks.

So I finally broke down and did what I SHOULD have done years ago – bought a Mist King system. When you add up everything I spent on the various foggers, I would have saved money if I’d just bought the Mist King to begin with! Ah, well. Live and learn.

I just received everything over the weekend, and have it 90% hooked up (I had to order some more tubing to finish). So far, it’s fabulous! And, oh my god, this thing could not be quieter! The foggers were louder! I am looking forward to many years of misty fogs in the orchid case, and lots of happy orchids.

Is there a question in all this? Why yes! There is!

I’m curious how folks who use a misting system like this implement it. Meaning: Do you set a timer, and have it run x-many minutes every y-hours? Do you have it set up with a humidistat? Right now, I’m experimenting, to see if I can identify timing intervals that keep the tank high-humidity but not dripping. But I’m also planning to run it through the humidistat to see what sort of results that produces. I was just wondering what input the Group Mind might have from other such endeavors.

Thanks in advance, crew!