Seed Germination/Early Growth Chamber

Tool Concept
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Concept

 

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A seed germination chamber using a broken upright freezer. I got the idea from DGrover's "Sweat box" Germination Chamber: http://farmhack.net/tools/sweat-box-germination-chamber. I added onto his design by adding lighting, air circulation, a heat source and temperature/humidity gauges. This is a functioning concept that is being tested right now, and there are still issues to work out. Such as preventing excessive temperature and humidity levels as well as other concerns. So far the expense is about $150 (not including cost of freezer), nominal compared with a manufactured growth chamber, thus enabling small farmers/gardeners the ability to reliably start quantities of seeds early and extend their season.
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We plugged the unit in on March 3, 2015. Some of the issues we have noticed in the first few days of operation are extremely high temperatures and humidity levels. When removing the old freezer hardware I left the thermostat wiring in place, I'm thinking I can use this wiring to set up a way for the unit to be self regulating, I'm just not sure how to do this. We started out with an aquarium pump in a pan of water to keep the heat/humidity up, but this proved to be too much. We took the aquarium heater/pan out and put a 60W incandescent bulb in the unit to provide the heat source. This is still too much, sending the lower part of the unit to well over 100F while keeping the top of the unit at about 85F (where I want it). The humidity level is staying at almost 100%.

For air circulation we are using 2 - 80mm computer cabinet fans. There are two concerns with these, the first being that the fans ended up being quite small and I'm not sure if they are circulating enough air, the other concern being their long-term operation in an environment with such high humidity.

We also had to re-position the LED lights because of a shade line made by the back of the light fixture. Once re-positioned, the shade line was no longer an issue.

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