Funny Monk

Pictures are from F41 I’ll start off with the positives, Ms. Monk is doing great, she smells intense and absolutely delightful, I wish I could upload her smell as you would all love it I’m sure. The colas are swelling and she looks happy AF. I’m a little surprised by the amount of orange hairs on her considering how many weeks she still has left, but I’ve read that she likes to orange in early. I’ve also read that it’s tempting to harvest her early but it’s best to wait and let her go full term or even long. With all the well-developed cola’s and orange hairs I can see how it’s really tempting to pull her early but I’m in it to win it so I’m going to take the other growers advice (Thanks) and run her to full term. The branch that was injured from the drill that was dropped is doing well, it fattened up and the cola seems fine. So this week was a mad flurry of frustration. The grow room spiked with humidity a few time, not for hours but for minutes. Last week the humidity was flirting with the edge of the acceptable high 40’s% to low 50% range, I didn’t like it and I was investigating then and coming up with ideas/plans to help mitigate it. I have a Frigidaire 70 Pint (33L) dehumidifier. It’s supposed to be able to pull out up to 33L (70 pints) of moisture from the air per 24 hour period. The tank on it is small (5.5L/13pints) but it has a constant drain port on it and so I’ve mounted it on the wall above a 55 gallon (200L) barrel for it to drain into. I use this barrel for plant water; I have to fill it up with the hose every week as I use more than the dehumidifier produces but it’s a nice water reservoir. I then also run a portable A/C and portable room heater to heat or cool as the room needs per season. Above is a picture and layout of the setup. On my previous grow the Frigidaire dehumidifier has been able to keep up with the room, but that only had 2 large plants and 2 small plants (one of which was killed ½ way through flowering due to growing balls). It was also over the winter and although we were really rainy and humid we were also very cool (0-8C) and as such dehumidifying demand might not have been as much as it is now that I have 4 very large plants and it’s a very humid and warm spring. So last week I put a clear bucket under the dehumidifier for an ~hour to see if it was working and I had water in the container so I thought to myself, “it’s fine, it’s working”. My attention then went to the room. The 4x4 tent (with Atomic Bomb, Northern Lights, and Painkiller) I have venting out of the room, the 2x4 tent (with Laughing Buddha) I had venting into the room. So my thought was that the moisture that the large Laughing Buddha was putting out must be pushing the rooms humidity too high for the dehumidifier to handle. In a mad panic I attached some piping (luckily the previous house owners had left some vent piping laying around in the rafters of the garage). I took that and ran it over to the exhaust box I had made previously, I even had a port on it ready for a hook up if I needed/wanted. I watched the humidity drop and the next day things were better, but still not fantastic. It got me down in the safe range again, but just barely. I was also having spikes (not short ones) in the humidity. So I started looking at the WEMO recorded data I had for the dehumidifier (I run all the lights, AC, heater, and dehumidifier on WEMO’s). I noticed that the dehumidifier was dropping power consumption from 500w to 50w when the spike would start and was not kicking back up to 500w for a long period of time. At 50w it’s only running the fan not the compressor that is needed to dehumidify. This normal way it operates when it hits it humidity level set it turns the compressor off to save energy, but the problem was it was way above that humidity level. I thought this might be a sensor issue, but no problem the dehumidifier has a “constantly on” setting where it won’t listen to the sensor it will just stay on all the time. I put the dehumidifier over to this setting and it should never kick down to “fan only” mode. But low and behold it did, the dehumidifier was kicking down to fan only mode several times a day and for hour+ time periods. My problem was a faulty dehumidifier not a tent venting issue. So I ran out to Lowes that evening and picked up a new dehumidifier, I checked for a different model online but the Frigidaire is still the one with the best review by a mile, so I picked it up again thinking that I might just have a dud. I called up Frigidaire and they said they will warranty the original one, so I need to file some paper work and I should get a replacement unit in a few weeks for the dud one. I ran a test on the old faulty dehumidifier and it’s pulling about 10L/24 hour period, it’s not completely dead but it’s not running anywhere near the 33L/24h that it’s supposed to do. I only got to run the new dehumidifier for a couple days before this week was over but it’s looking good, humidity levels have dropped down and hopefully I caught it early enough. Peace, Love, and a Corny Joke from the Funny Monk Why is the roach clip called a roach clip? A: Because pot holder was taken.