I've had extremely low humidity from the get go. Fortunately i was able to find a small enough humidifier at a reasonable price that i could squeeze between my buckets. It's only been in the room for about 3 days and the improvement in my girls appearance is astonishing! The leaves have perked up, color has improved and the overall vigor of the plants has really done a 180! My question is does anyone using a humidifier adjust the water going into it? For example, does the PPM and PH of the water being added really matter? I feel it would have no adverse effects using plain old tap water, especially considering that's whats been going in for the past three days and everything's improved thus far. Just some food for thought Thanks
no i dont think it would do anything if you changed the water, i could be wrong but if anything it wouldnt be much
you should put nutes in it. wonder if it would foiler feed your plants. idk if thats good to have in the air tho.
Don't put nutes in the humidifier, you probably will ruin the machine. Make sure the water going in isn't totally whacked, such as really high ppm or extreme pH, and as long as it is reasonably middle-of-the-road it should be fine.
The only reason I think you'd worry about ppms or anything of that ilk, is if you have hard water, the machine will build up scale
cool thanks guys. I think I'll pass on the whole nute idea. haha. Couldn't imagine it being all that effective and it would cost an arm and a leg considering the unit goes through about 10L every 8 hours. My water is sitting about 150-200 PPM with a PH of about 7. Should be alright?
Yea I don't think so. I use a hummidifier right next to my intake and I think it like boils the water so it should be some fresh water goin in there.
you should really get one that doesn't heat up/boil the water... it makes all the difference (adiabatic as opposed to isothermal)
I wondered about that! Mine definitely just heats the water to a boiling point then emits the steam into the cab. It's sitting directly between my two plants and I worried there might be some issues with the heat. I'm able to keep my cab temps reasonable but if you put your hand over the outlet of the humidifier the steam is extremely hot! Some Foliage is very close to it also. I've yet to see and negative side effects and the units been going for about a week now. You guys see any issue?
The humidifier will only put H2O into the air, so anything else that is in your water will stay in the humidifier. Same concept as if you take salt water, pour it on the ground, wait for it to dry up and you will be left with salt on the floor. Best water for a humidifier would be distilled, which is why at the store they usually stock it right next to where they have the humidifiers.
probably no issues as long as you dont care about the foilage thats almost touching the the exhaust. let me tell you though an adiabatic system really perks up the plants and is worth the money.
if there is bacteria and shit in the water it will also be put into the air but with the isothermal systems the bacteria is killed when the water is heated up to make the steam
Isothermal eh? Never heard of it. I always thought humidifiers worked pretty well the same way as mine. I've gotta look into one of those units though. I'm real curious now. I had no Humidity at the beginning of my grow... when i say no humidity i mean absolutely non! My RH reading said LOW. Sinse adding the unit my RH reading hovers around the 35-45% range. Not nearly as high as I'd like it to be but much better then nothing at all. The girls have certainly perked up too! The change has really been night and day. The leaves have started pointing outward, branches have elongated, and overall vigor has improved ten fold. It's so damn hard to keep your moister levels high with such dry air though... gotta do whachya gotta do.
isothermal are the ones that use heat and boil the water, i would go with an adiabatic system because they dont put out heat. 35 - 45% is fine for humidity, you want around 50% for veg and 40% for flower.
Pretty sweet that it got things on track for you. Hey don't worry about the water type or pH but scale reduce water will control build up. Citric acid from fresh lemon juice will take the scale right off. ~HD
Awesome! I'll give my humidifier a couple drops then. I've already seen a little build up starting and it's only been a week.
I am using a humidifier and use just regular tap water. Would not recommend putting anything in the thing. The roots are the ones gonna take in the nutes. I have a small grow space and had to cool it down with AC which causes the humidity to vanish. With my humidifier I manage to keep it at 25% now. I have it set on low and requires filling it with water dailey. Once i started using it the color became brilliant and overall look spectacular. I read somewhere that 1 in. growth dailey can happen when in the right conditions. My dailey average growth is at 7/8 in.
I know this is a old thread but i wanted to add some good information... I really have no clue but you might be right with the "hot steam" humidifers...they might burn up the nutrients before they evaporate but I do know with the "cool mist" humidifiers it should work for any type of foliar spray type nutrients but i wouldnt try it in any humidifer if its not made for foliar... I put Epsom salt in my humidifier and it has AMAIZING RESULTS!!....you can literally watch the plants turn darker and look healthier within 20 to 30 seconds... I have good quality Epsom made for hydroponics but im jot sure if thats the reason i think its the humidifer. I say if its made for folier spray it will work for "cool mist" humidifiers at least but nit sure about hot steam.