HUMIDITY AT NIGHT? TO PREVENT MOLD

Adi1989

Active Member
Hi Guys, does anyone know what the lowest humidity we can have at night to prevent mold is please? During Veg and flower
 

I L0VE W33D

Well-Known Member
Lot more experienced folk kicking around than I, but from what I've learned you don't want it any lower than 30%
 

Adi1989

Active Member
Awesome thanks mate we have it at 50% at the moment, we had a outbreak of fungus which was horrible :(
 

stalebiscuit

Well-Known Member
Its a sealed room, how do you get the best airflow just use lots of oscillating fans?
that mostly, they move air around enough to prevent spores from sticking

you can run a carbon filter too and use duct work if you have an oscillating tool or some way to cut a 3 inch or so square in the wall. will also cover smells too

this


plus



should be good
 

Renfro

Well-Known Member
that mostly, they move air around enough to prevent spores from sticking

you can run a carbon filter too and use duct work if you have an oscillating tool or some way to cut a 3 inch or so square in the wall. will also cover smells too

this


plus



should be good
that booster fan in the image is garbage.
my understanding is sufficient airflow is number 1 mold preventer
airflow helps prevent areas of higher humidity. Microclimates. Still if the air is humid you can move it all you like, it is still humid.
Hi Guys, does anyone know what the lowest humidity we can have at night to prevent mold is please? During Veg and flower
It is important to remember that PM likes RH% swings, low/high/low/high. So if you can avoid the extreme lows you are good to go in most cases, unless there is an existing infection, PM is hard to kill.

Botrytis is evil as it will strike your biggest buds, so I wanna be between 45 and 50% during later flowering.
 

stalebiscuit

Well-Known Member
that booster fan in the image is garbage.

airflow helps prevent areas of higher humidity. Microclimates. Still if the air is humid you can move it all you like, it is still humid.

It is important to remember that PM likes RH% swings, low/high/low/high. So if you can avoid the extreme lows you are good to go in most cases, unless there is an existing infection, PM is hard to kill.

Botrytis is evil as it will strike your biggest buds, so I wanna be between 45 and 50% during later flowering.
ohhh im sure it sucks, i just google image searched
 

CannaOnerStar

Well-Known Member
Awesome thanks mate, do you find 50% humidity is ok at night during veg?
Someone on another thread said that there is not much to worry unless it goes over 65rh at night. But i just found some budrot even tho i was below that, most likely due to picking up leafs from tight buds, which ended up releasing moisture inside the buds(this is just a theory, could be something else also), combined with really tight buds and bit too low airflow.

Unless you do something weird, your humidity will be higher at night than during day. During day about 45% rh is ideal, so 50% at night is good.

But the ideal humidity depends on your temperatures, higher temperatures allow for more moisture without causing mold.

Google VPD to get an idea how temperature and rh should go hand to hand during day hours and also keep in mind that lower temp = easier mold with same rh. Too dry compared to temperature doesent allow plant to photosynthesise properly, but this matter more during the day
 

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
Could I even go down to 40%?
If you go to low you'll invite other problems with the moisture getting sucked from the plant keep it around 48/52% rh
If you maintain the temperatures and use good ventilation the rh% will maintain itself.
 

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
Relative humidity is a measurement of how much water air can hold at a given temperature.
Cold air has a very limited ability to hold water, if you take a sample of air at 50f 80%rh and heat it to 77f its rh% will drop down to nearly half, I can't remember the exact figures but heating it has a dramatic effect in the it's ability to hold water hence rh%, % of moisture relative to heat.
 

CannaOnerStar

Well-Known Member
Relative humidity is a measurement of how much water air can hold at a given temperature.
Cold air has a very limited ability to hold water, if you take a sample of air at 50f 80%rh and heat it to 77f its rh% will drop down to nearly half, I can't remember the exact figures but heating it has a dramatic effect in the it's ability to hold water hence rh%, % of moisture relative to heat.
Heat is movement at very small levels and cold things are still. If there is more heat, the water molecules are moving around more and thus dont start to condensate on surfaces as easily. Unless ofc the surface is a lot cooler compared to air, which is not the case with plants, except that they evaporate water, which might cool down things a bit, but that water is moving away and not condensating, unless there is a very poor air movement, then maybe.

Also if those water molecules are moving around rapidly, then there can be more of them in same space without them clumping together and wetting things. Also if surface of the plant is warm, it will shake and expell water molecules that also pick up this heat energy and start moving/vibrating.

I like to think it this way :D
 

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
If you can understand it in whatever format that makes it easier to understand and deal with. thumbs.
Clouds going over mountains and getting wrung out by the cold air is goog analogy for a layman like me :-)
.
 

p0opstlnksal0t

Well-Known Member
It is important to remember that PM likes RH% swings, low/high/low/high.

Botrytis is evil as it will strike your biggest buds, so I wanna be between 45 and 50% during later flowering.
Exactly It's the swings that kill the room not the high humidity itself.

The best yields I've squeezed out of one of my rooms was when I ran 80° f and 70% RH from beginning to end. From the time the clones were dropped into their final pot until the time I chopped I kept the room at 80° and 70RH and the nighttime temp and humidity was exactly the same It's difficult to do but overall my plants looked the best yielded the best and stayed the healthiest from beginning to end in that one run I've had a hell of a time trying to mimic it now since it's a little difficult keeping nighttime temp and humidity exactly the same as lights on temp and humidity
 

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
I'm fussy with my rh and I have seen bits of bud rot, when I 1st started growing my set up was less than stellar, crap fans, cold night temps = high rh% and never had any bud rott, this is only a theory of mine but I think it's strain related?
I'm not Mr current affairs but I'm sure there's a few strains that are botrytis resistant... Anyone?
 

Cinco

Well-Known Member
I'm fussy with my rh and I have seen bits of bud rot, when I 1st started growing my set up was less than stellar, crap fans, cold night temps = high rh% and never had any bud rott, this is only a theory of mine but I think it's strain related?
I'm not Mr current affairs but I'm sure there's a few strains that are botrytis resistant... Anyone?
There are a lot of mold resistant strains. You can look them up. Many commercially developed and viable strains are mold and PM resistant. Resistant being the key, nothing is mold proof.

I have done runs at peak flower VPD at 80% RH and not had any rot issues. Plants love it. But I use multiple fans blowing under and through the canopy. Not just a gentle breeze, on max blowing air through the canopy. What most people would call too much airflow, probably. Never an issue on my end.

Where people have issues, in my pure opinion anyway, is with big swings as @Renfro said. 30c and 80% RH runs great if you maintain it... the plants grow like you would expect they would in a lush tropical equatorial rain forest.

However, like running anything at its max, there is less margin for error — when the temp swings down at lights out, you hit the dew point very quickly. At those room specs (30c, 80% RH)the dew point is only 26.2c. Only 3.8 degrees margin, or 12.6% temperature delta — below that, and all that moisture starts crashing out of the air and accumulating on the surfaces of everything. PM and mold love it.

So maintaining roughly the same vPD at a lower temp provides better buffer. At 20c and 60% RH, for example, the dew point is at 12c. 8c difference, and a much bigger margin at 40% delta needed to hit the dew point.

Just my thoughts from years of growing things, most of it not weed.
 
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Cinco

Well-Known Member
And for anyone interested, looking at dew point and temperature deltas needed to hit it can provide methods to mitigate PM and botrytis if you need or want a swing — ie, you don’t have to keep night time temps so high.

For example, if you can adjust your environmental controls to drop RH at 30c to even 65% RH (down from 80%) just before lights off, you expand that delta before dew point by a huge margin. Dew point drops to 22.7c and you safely allow temps to drop by several degrees.
 
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