Wine cooler conversion curer

[FarmerPalmersNT]

Yep and yep. Although I'm not sure how much difference it makes leaving stems on in the cooler. I only really remove the big fan leaves.

[Blue brother]

32 minutes ago, FarmerPalmersNT said:

Yep and yep. Although I'm not sure how much difference it makes leaving stems on in the cooler. I only really remove the big fan leaves.

Excellent, that is enough bud for me to smoke til my next one comes down, I’ll be making fresh frozen bubble hash with most of it anyways.

 

Do you think I could add bud to the unit over the space of 7-10 days as different phenos finish? 
 

thanks so much for going through this for me 

[Thai Stick]

@FarmerPalmersNT Are you hanging the plants or laying them down flat?

 

Reckon you could fit a lot in there if flat on screens.

[Blue brother]

I might be tempted to fill a mesh tray with smaller buds with no stem to see what it dries like, I’ve heard that no matter when you add fresh material to the cannatrol unit it won’t hinder or lengthen the drying process of earlier additions. Is this something that you can comment on ? @FarmerPalmersNT

[FarmerPalmersNT]

9 hours ago, Thai Stick said:

@FarmerPalmersNT Are you hanging the plants or laying them down flat?

 

Reckon you could fit a lot in there if flat on screens.

 

Flat

 

5 hours ago, Blue brother said:

I might be tempted to fill a mesh tray with smaller buds with no stem to see what it dries like, I’ve heard that no matter when you add fresh material to the cannatrol unit it won’t hinder or lengthen the drying process of earlier additions. Is this something that you can comment on ? @FarmerPalmersNT

 

That'd be right yeah, just that you'd not be able to stagger it. Don't think it matters much though. 

[Keye]

Quick update on my progress so far.

 

I've drilled the side of the fridge - there are no pipes in the sides or top. This is a little desktop fridge by the manufacturer 'Husky'; they sold them in Asda years ago as beer fridges.

 

I tried making a new door so that I could drill through that, but the foam panel I built wasn't stiff enough and bent. So I went to the hole option. 

 

I've plumbed the dehumidifier pipe out the bottom and the sensor for the temperature is in the top. I had to cut the humidity sensor off and pass it through the hole and then rewire it. Just like I did with the power cable to the dehumidifier.

 

 

 

I'll nicely arrange the InkBirds that are doing the control. I need to put my other ink bird in there to monitor the levels. I haven't hooked these up to wifi yet.

 

 

 

[MindSoup]

Are all the small wine cooler fridges peltier based? I've been looking at second hand ones, so finding specs isn't that easy. 

[Keye]

I'm not sure, actually. This is a compressor model. It's all I had to be honest and I did some reading and a lot of people are just drying in their own regular fridge, or a 'garage fridge'. It seems there's a raft of people putting their buds in to brown paper bags and then in to the fridge.

 

 

[blackpoolbouncer]

9 hours ago, Keye said:

there's a raft of people putting their buds

There's a raft of people that took to eating tide detergent pods online. Just saying. 

 

Approach with caution mate. I think your fridge is gonna crispy the weed in no time. 

I could be entirely wrong

[Keye]

Warning heeded @blackpoolbouncer. Yes, I have been considering the Tide of Opinion during research. Most of this is from the US.... But there is quite a lot on this fridge drying going back many years. Maybe I'm looking at my fridge clones and am getting carried away.

 

I suppose my problem is that I don't have anywhere great to dry the weed I've grown, if I'm going to keep this box flowering that is. I've not heard about this before, but keeping important levels where they need to be and being a bit more statistical about thing is where I'm at. I also dropped in to this very quickly because I'm doing some cooling projects outside of the gardening so my mind was in the space.

 

I'm going to run it for a week with my Inkbird logger and see. I have turned the fridge all the way down to setting '3'; it takes ages to get to temperature but seems to be sitting there as I've been checking it anecdotally. The humidity was swinging about too but that seems to have settled now I've plumbed it out and more importantly, adjusted the Inkbirds so they don't run +/-5oC or %rH.

 

The data will let me know if it's off. I might even run it without cooling perhaps; it's a sealed box with moisture removal so it's mostly there in that case.

 

 

[catfish]

I brought one of these wine coolers off a pal for pennies.  It has a A+ rating so

 

It's now my weed store . Better than just glass jars that's for sure 

[FarmerPalmersNT]

Just an update. Have changed tactic a bit in settings. I find if I set the fridge low at 14 and the dehumidifier at 55 to start it self regulates better. 

 

It will struggle to pull the temp down to 14 to start with as the dehumidifier is working harder. The dehumidifier seems to smooth that curve if it's taking lots of little nibbles at 55 rather than caning it at 45. So the temp will only start dropping right after a good amount of the excess moisture is out. Right where you want it. It'll stabilise out and drop right down when the weed is ready to go into cure. At which point I pop it up to 60rh and it will edge there and stay put. I can leave it on the racks as long as I like at that point.

 

I've also zip tied some mesh baking trays to the wine racks. I've started removing a bit more stalk as the moisture reserve isn't as critical when I'm not hanging in the wind. This means little buds can drop through the wine racks. These trays let me get a lot more in too. I'm finding I can actually get quite a bit fairly tightly stacked in without any issues.

 

These are the jobbies. I've taken a lot out now to put some other bits in but that was rammed.

 

Edited November 21, 2021 by FarmerPalmersNT

[Keye]

Looks Great @FarmerPalmersNT good update. I've used those baskets before; not for weed though! Good idea.

 

My update - 

 

I've had a bit of a couple of weeks on this, now. I borked my ink bird controller so I bought another one, different brand - it does temp/hum in one unit and it's been working OK. I've struggled to maintain consistency, I think. 'I think' because my three sensors all read different amounts....

 

This was a couple days ago now. But it's pretty typical of what I've been getting. I left the sensor outside, so you can see the spike it drops from on the left of the graph. The min/max/av are out because of that, but this 1 degree tolerance is typical.

 

 

Humidity, on the other hand...

 

 

 

It's been jumping around a bit more, but I'm trying to hit 60% and let it roll there for a bit, then I'll try and bring it down if needed. It seems to be going OK at the moment, though. The buds have been in my fridge for about 3 days now. They bloody stink, for sure and they're not too dry.

 

 

 

[Thai Stick]

I suspect its the dehumidifyer kicking on and off.

 

i would assume that the more dry the material becomes, the wider the time gap will be between humidity going up and down as it stabilizes.

[Keye]

Yes. The swings were bigger with the fridge empty and then I put a wet paper towel in there and it settled down. Certainly, the mass of material in there is buffering a little but then being caught on the upswing, as it were. I did think it would settle down, yes. You can see the heat start to rise as soon as the dehumidifier comes on, within seconds actually and the fridge takes about 60s to 2m to begin the reverse. I've tweaked the on/off points so there's less swing so far. It's programmed for 50%RH but that seems to keep it at around 60%ish. I also think that will change and I'll have to set it closer to the actual point I want.

 

I'm getting happier with the setup; as @blackpoolbouncer pointed out I was a bit concerned I'd be running too extreme with this. I'm checking twice a day so far and it's heading in the right direction. I'll run for another week. If it's still good to go, I'll start thinking about investing in a cooler like @FarmerPalmersNT. The operation seems to be better but also the layout, which is a bit clunky in my square format to have the dehumidifier and shelving in it. 

 

There's no shelving in mine, I couldn't jig anything up in time, so they're hanging from rods across the top or smaller buds are in little card trays on the ground.

 

The compressor turning on/off isn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's near our bedroom so if I can take away the compressor part and just have fan noise, that'd be great.