Details of my high tech Orchidarium

[Ocelaris]

I have posted some of this in different locations, but thought I would put it all together to show people what I'm doing, and of course I'm up for suggestions, but also I hope it helps others get ideas themselves. Credit goes a lot to my wife who has made or helped with the creation of the structure and the how to make it work


Here's a pic of the tank as it stands today




First the humidity. I have a bucket with an ultrasonic fogger, it sits in a doughnut floating ring so it's at just the right level about 1" below the surface of the water. It has a 120mm ~4.5" fan blowing down into it, and then tubes going to each of my chambers. The clear tube is so that the fan isn't close to the water, I have gone through like 5 fans because they rust and die... so this one keeps it far enough away that it doesn't get too much moisture on it. I have a dimmer switch on the fan which is 120volts... it's at about 3/4 on, if you go too low, it will pull too many amps and burn up the fan (I learned the hard way). I got the fans on ebay for about 5-20$ a piece. I've found the industrial strength ones work better than computer fans. Mine are Comair rotron a very good brand, and their website has great specs to determine the noise level of the fan, the air pressure it can push, and the volume. They are always in good supply too on ebay, it's my little secret I'm sharing I also use a fan like this in the chamber to move air around, it does a good job in the high humidity, where as the computer fans burned out regularly.




My second innovation is the humidistat I got for a steal on ebay, it's an Invensys HC-201 . I got mine for like 30$ but they're regularly 150$, you can find it on ebay for about 90$ shipped now:

Invensys Building Systems HC-201 Duct Humidistat NEW - eBay (item 320165547227 end time Jan-30-08 09:35:06 PST)

Basically it is a relay, so it turns on or off any power source, it even works for 120v AC, so I have my humidifier setup set to 80% humidity, and it goes up to about 80, turns off, goes down to 70% and turns back on... does a very good job keeping humidity at just the right levels. It uses a modern plastic humidity sensor, so it is more accurate and long lasting than the coil types. You can see the front which sits inside the chamber, and the back with the dial and box for power connections. You can either have it turn on or off something when it his the prescribed humidity.




lastly you can see my metal halide "cool tube" don't ask where I got the idea. But basically it is totally enclosed from the chamber, and it pulls air through it so it's wholly seperated from the orchids. I used to have a 150w MH, but that was too much light, so now I have a 100w MH. It's actually cooler on top than the CF 2x36w on bottom (which are also seperated from the tank:






heres the full chamber, it's about 2 feet square by about 5 feet tall...

I have a temp/humidity sensor in each chamber, and I can download the data to my computer as a text file, and graph it with excel. The system is a La Crosse Wireless Data Logger. it has a base station, and then you can add 3 more (for a total of 4) the model # is the WS-8610U. The data goes back ~2 weeks and records every 5 minutes the temp and humidity... Very useful, and not too expensive for what it does.

WS-8610U by La Crosse Technology - Tomorrow's Weather Today