Evaporative cooling of sphagnum moss

[vegetalmatter]

Most of my collection is in semi-hydro and I've had good success with almost everything except for phals.

I recently caught the phal bug again after having some short term success in traditional culture using mostly sphag in wood baskets.

here is my setup:



I water every few days by putting the baskets in a large bowl and spraying with a pump sprayer until they are drenched. Today, about an hour after I watered, I touched the sphag on top and it felt a bit cold.. I then checked with a temperature gun and it read 68.9F!! Not even my cool shelf with Masdevallias in LECA & clay pots read that low.



My apartment thermostat is set at 77F and under LEDs, the leaves of most my other plants read about 80F+, and about 75F+ on the top of the LECA.

I have more species phals coming in the mail this week including a bellina. I don't want to have to put them on heat mats or anything like that. Will they be fine or will they suffer from wet and cool?

---------- Post added at 01:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:34 PM ----------

Second question. Is there a relationship between leaf temperature and root zone temperature? Because although the surface of the moss reads 68F, I'm actually getting 79F on the surface of the leaves. Maybe they even each other out or something like that lol