Growing Tropical Plants in your Loft/Attic

[John Rumm]

[dennis]

There is a shed I drive past with a length of 100mm duct sticking out so I can guess what's in there.

The carbon filters work quite well at removing cooking smells and bonfire smells and reduce pollen at lot (I have one running in reverse to get clean air into the house as the wife suffers from asthma).

[Cursitor Doom]

On Sat, 18 Apr 2015 12:33:00 +0100, Nightjar A recent raid locally was the result of a Policewoman noticing the smell

Why do they use extractors, then? Seems like a daft idea if it's going to give the game away!

[ARW]

And he wanted to stick his knob in it?

[ARW]

To get rid of the heat

[Jethro_uk]

The general consensus in circles that have done a *lot* of practical research is snake-oil through and through. They look pretty, but no one has actually reported any verified viable yields from such things. The problem being the narrow spread of wavelengths from LEDs which don't come anywhere close to matching the sun.

[Chris Hogg]

You're wrong about that last bit. Tungsten lamps were widely used in the early days, before fluorescents came along. It's referred to in several of the articles linked to here

. I don't know the wattage commonly used, but I have a reference from the early 1960's to a row of 250 watt lamps being used to extend day length and speed up the growth of camellia seedlings*. Tungsten lamps are still available for household use, but are these high-wattage ones still available?

*Treseder & Hyams, 'Growing Camellias', Nelson, 1975, p.139

[Nightjar]

The grow lights usually produce a lot more heat than the plants like. Extraction is the simplest and cheapest way to control that.

In this case, the growers probably thought they were OK as, apparently, the smell was only noticeable quite close to the outlet, which was not near any publicly accessible areas. Unfortunately for them, following a suspicious fire nearby, the Police were looking in places they wouldn't normally have visited.

[tabbypurr]

ions, tungsten light bulbs have remained the light source of choice for thi s application for many years. However, tungsten light bulbs were phased out by the UK Government on 1st September 2011 "

tultural use.

years ago I tried using halogen temporarily for indoor plants, but too much heat for enough light. And not a sensible option longer term.

NT

[Mr Pounder]

[Adam Aglionby]

ions, tungsten light bulbs have remained the light source of choice for thi s application for many years. However, tungsten light bulbs were phased out by the UK Government on 1st September 2011 "

tultural use.

Thats fascinating Thanks Chris, guessing probably referring to 250W GLS, c onventional bulb shaped lamps, the tungsten halogen lamp didn`t come about till the late 50`s and would have still been an exotic lamp then.

Always thought too much IR in tungsten to be useful, that and lamp life isn `t anywhere near the 10K+ hours can get out of HPS,current HPS/HID like flu ro are result of decades of development now.

Tungsten daylight/grow/craft/sad lamps are a con, all it is is a blue coati ng on the lamp.

[Adam Aglionby]

Its also a quaetion of letting plants breathe, looking at Combined Heat and Power get into tri-generation which is Heat Power and Cooling and onto qua d generation which adds carbon capture as cleaned up CO2 from exhaust, this is then fed to enrich atmosphere in grenhouses, some distillerys exprimnte d with it a while back with excess CO2 from mashing.

Or just pull a lot of air through the enclosed space, though don`t think an yone has mistaken my local sprayshop for a weed grow yet.

[whisky-dave]

I thought one of the other main problems was ventilation as in getting rid of the smell and gettign enough air flow to stop certain moulds and insects.

[Chris Hogg]

Stagnant air certainly does encourage mould growth, but I don't think it has any effect on insects one way or the other.

[whisky-dave]

I've heard about frip(SP) phrip can't remmeber the spelling that comes about due to the higher temperatiures and humidity.

[Chris Hogg]

ITYM thrips; they like warm, humid conditions (they're aka thunder-bugs). This link

does suggest forced air circulation using powerful fans to blow them away, but I have difficulty in believing that it is very effective. There are plenty of better ways.

[Adam Aglionby]

nd Power get into tri-generation which is Heat Power and Cooling and onto q uad generation which adds carbon capture as cleaned up CO2 from exhaust, th is is then fed to enrich atmosphere in grenhouses, some distillerys exprimn ted with it a while back with excess CO2 from mashing.

Something Harry said about CHP not working out unless had a use for the hea t, British Sugar and Britains largest greenhouse , consumes the CO2 as well :

If CHP with carbon recovery works that well, 95%!?, should all be turning i nto energy farmers running tomatoes and rape seed for the gennies, few sola r panels round the edges and be a subsidy magnet ;-)

[dennis]

All made possible by using cheap fossil fuels to build the stuff. Try doing it when you are paying 40p a unit for solar and wind energy to build it.

Maybe the law should change now that there is so much green energy about to force the greens to only use green energy to build stuff. Then they really will save energy and know how much it really costs.

They can start by finding a way to power a cement factory to produce concrete for the windmills instead of burning all that gas.

They will need smart meters too so they can be cut off when there isn't enough green electricity to go around or pay a *big* premium for some reliable nuke stuff.

[Chris Hogg]

CO2 enrichment of greenhouse atmospheres has been around for a long time (

). A good use for waste CO2, that's for sure, but I can't imagine it making a big dent in the amounts needed to be disposed of nationally.

Incidentally, regarding CHP systems, Denmark has operated these for many decades, using the waste heat from electricity power stations for district heating (DH), much as used to be done in Pimlico, using heat from the old Battersea power station. That system still functions today, but using a different heat source

.

In fact a lot of Denmark's DH systems were initially built simply as that, without any electricity generating capacity, the latter being added subsequently

. These systems were fueled by coal, but many now run on gas. Denmark's CHP systems are an extremely efficient way of using fossil fuel energy. They are one reason why Denmark will never abandon electricity generation by fossil fuel combustion completely, even when its wind farms are producing more electricity than the country needs and has to export the surplus at rock-bottom prices, simply because a huge number of dwellings rely on the waste heat to keep them warm; without them, Danish homes would get mighty chilly in the winter!