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87_botanist

Grow Rooms

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Hello its me again :slap:

 

I am looking at building a grow room in the garage due the house been to small, but I want it to be suitable for growing edible mushrooms. The key challenge I have is the WA summer in a garage which has a tin roof.

 

I was thinking of maybe cool room panelling to construct which is on the $$$ plus you need a unit to cool or heat depending on the season (but I think this will be the case in any construction) the other type that I can think of is stud walls with wet area board with insulation in the walls. The area I am looking at is roughly 1.2m to 1.8m W, 2.4m to 3.6m L and 2.05m to 2.3m H (cool room panels come in 1.2m wide standard)

 

I would love any information from past experiences of any kind and will take on board any other information.

 

Cheers 87_botanist

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What will you be using for airflow?

 

I've overseen construction of a fully enclosed plant growth area using panelling and it was great, but it did have a built up floor sloping to a drain so walls and ceiling could be washed. Mould was occasionally an issue for the bits which weren't reached so well by the airflow.

 

Plants require 5 volumes of air/hr to grow ( so for a 100m3 room, you needed 500m3 of airflow per hour ). No idea what mushrooms require per hour, but you do need to calculate that in. Might be easy to incorporate a prefilter on your intake to screen out bugs and pathogens too if you think about it at the planning stage

 

Also, think about dehydration when you've working in that volume of airflow. While temps might be ambient, it's easy to get dehydrated because of the constant air passing over your body while you're working. Keep drinking water handy

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Thanks Darklight,

 

For airflow I was just going to use an inline hydro fan or a simple wall cut in AC unit. I'm not sure if a A/C system will dry or take the humidity out of the air?

 

My maximum volume equates to 13.284m3 so times that by 5 is 66.24m3 which is not much in scheme of things.

 

Any other tips?

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Not sure what sort of power airflow you'd need for approx 66m3/hr, there are ppl on here who know vastly more than me about that. Also make sure there are no dead spots for air circulation in your room, or allow for them and use them for appropriate or less valuable species.

 

That 5x volume/hr figure was for growing plant crops- check the figure for mushies

 

Fully enclosed grow rooms are a bastard for pest management. New ones are fine, but once something moves in...

 

If you have shelves or benches put that yellow sticky-trap tape round all the feet so it's work for things to climb onto ( or off ) them and keep the units away from the walls

 

Keep the floors as clean and as clear as you can, regular vacuuming with a wet and dry seems like overkill but it's really good pest management. Sticky mats at the entranceways can also help

 

Work clean to dirty every day- ie if your grow space is the cleanest place you work, start there and then move outside- don't spend the morning dealing with dirty spawn bags and compost heaps and then walk into your nice clean workspace

 

Also: assume your neighbours and extended family will believe you're growing pot, no matter what you tell them, so show them around a lot and take them plenty of mushrooms to eat

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Cheers Darklight,

 

That info was great and ill have to stress the last part lol

Edited by 87_botanist

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