So I just posted this in my other journal entitled "Greenislands Humate Supreme (organic) grow but I wanted to people to have quick and easy access to this info so I made a new thread and am posting it here for everyone to see.
Dispensing CO2 without a infrared CO2 ppm meter/doser.
So I dont have a infrared CO2 ppm meter nor do I have the money for one so I will be timing the CO2 dispensed and tested to make sure its not over or under dosing. So when you want to try and calculate how much CO2 you need and how to dispense it you just have to do some simple math. If you have the extra cash its really, really worth getting a CO2 ppm meter/dispenser. But if you absolutely dont have the extra cash like me there is a way to dispense with a short cycle timer. So what you do is take the measurements of the room (height, width, length). So you multiply height x width x length. That gives you the cubic ft of your room. Now you want to enrich your garden to a percentage of .002 (2000ppm), between 1500-2000 is good. In the atmosphere already there is on average 300 to 400 ppm in the atmosphere. If you live in a populated city you can expect it to be on the higher side. If your garden is next to a gas water heater or furnace you can expect it to be a little higher as well. So now you need to take the ideal ppms of co2 which is .0015(1500ppm) to .002(2000ppm), well go with 2000ppm for this demo. So we have .00035 to .00039 on average already in the atmosphere so we need to take the "ideal" ppm of .0020 and subtract .00035 (CO2 already in the air) from that so you know how much more co2 you need to get to the desired amount of CO2 in the room. So you get .00165 as the amount you need to enrich your room. So for instance if you had a room that was 10ft x 10ft x 8ft you get a measurement of 800cubic ft for your room. Now multiply that by .00165 if you want to enrich to 2000ppms. You get 1.32 cubic ft of CO2 needed to enrich the garden to 2000ppms. A typical single burner CO2 generator unit produces 3 cubic ft of CO2 per hour, if you have more burners you multiply that by however many burners you have. So if you need 1.32 cubic ft of CO2 and you have a single burner unit thats producing 3 cubic ft of CO2 per hour you take 1.32 and divide it by 3 giving you .44 hours you need to run the burner before the room is at 2000ppms. So in case you dont know how to figure out how long that is its slightly less than a half hour or 26.4 minutes. A room will typically loose its CO2 in about 3 hours. If you vent the room it can lose its CO2 saturation a lot faster, thats why you dont want to vent the room when your releasing CO2, its a waste. If your room is very very sealed (which even if you think your room is it probably isnt unless its in a freezer or something VERY sealed) you can keep the saturation longer but eventually the plants will use it up. The bigger they are the more they use. So what I would do for the situation above is release CO2 for 24 minutes as soon as the lights turn on, to fully saturate the room to 2000ppms... then 2 hours later I would release for 12 minutes and then release for 8 minutes every hour there after (24min divided by 3 equals 8 minutes every hour so in every 3 hours that goes by you release for your 24 minutes that your supposed to. You can just release for 24 minutes every 3 hours but its better to release more often at shorter intervals so you dont have the high and low spikes of CO2. This is assuming you are loosing all of your CO2 every 3 hours which is pretty average. Keep in mind when you enrich your garden to ppms of 1500-2000 your garden can run hotter without causing stress to your plants. Also you will need to wter and feed your plants more often so be prepared for that.
Hope this helps someone out at some point! Feel free to check out my other journals.
Dispensing CO2 without a infrared CO2 ppm meter/doser.
So I dont have a infrared CO2 ppm meter nor do I have the money for one so I will be timing the CO2 dispensed and tested to make sure its not over or under dosing. So when you want to try and calculate how much CO2 you need and how to dispense it you just have to do some simple math. If you have the extra cash its really, really worth getting a CO2 ppm meter/dispenser. But if you absolutely dont have the extra cash like me there is a way to dispense with a short cycle timer. So what you do is take the measurements of the room (height, width, length). So you multiply height x width x length. That gives you the cubic ft of your room. Now you want to enrich your garden to a percentage of .002 (2000ppm), between 1500-2000 is good. In the atmosphere already there is on average 300 to 400 ppm in the atmosphere. If you live in a populated city you can expect it to be on the higher side. If your garden is next to a gas water heater or furnace you can expect it to be a little higher as well. So now you need to take the ideal ppms of co2 which is .0015(1500ppm) to .002(2000ppm), well go with 2000ppm for this demo. So we have .00035 to .00039 on average already in the atmosphere so we need to take the "ideal" ppm of .0020 and subtract .00035 (CO2 already in the air) from that so you know how much more co2 you need to get to the desired amount of CO2 in the room. So you get .00165 as the amount you need to enrich your room. So for instance if you had a room that was 10ft x 10ft x 8ft you get a measurement of 800cubic ft for your room. Now multiply that by .00165 if you want to enrich to 2000ppms. You get 1.32 cubic ft of CO2 needed to enrich the garden to 2000ppms. A typical single burner CO2 generator unit produces 3 cubic ft of CO2 per hour, if you have more burners you multiply that by however many burners you have. So if you need 1.32 cubic ft of CO2 and you have a single burner unit thats producing 3 cubic ft of CO2 per hour you take 1.32 and divide it by 3 giving you .44 hours you need to run the burner before the room is at 2000ppms. So in case you dont know how to figure out how long that is its slightly less than a half hour or 26.4 minutes. A room will typically loose its CO2 in about 3 hours. If you vent the room it can lose its CO2 saturation a lot faster, thats why you dont want to vent the room when your releasing CO2, its a waste. If your room is very very sealed (which even if you think your room is it probably isnt unless its in a freezer or something VERY sealed) you can keep the saturation longer but eventually the plants will use it up. The bigger they are the more they use. So what I would do for the situation above is release CO2 for 24 minutes as soon as the lights turn on, to fully saturate the room to 2000ppms... then 2 hours later I would release for 12 minutes and then release for 8 minutes every hour there after (24min divided by 3 equals 8 minutes every hour so in every 3 hours that goes by you release for your 24 minutes that your supposed to. You can just release for 24 minutes every 3 hours but its better to release more often at shorter intervals so you dont have the high and low spikes of CO2. This is assuming you are loosing all of your CO2 every 3 hours which is pretty average. Keep in mind when you enrich your garden to ppms of 1500-2000 your garden can run hotter without causing stress to your plants. Also you will need to wter and feed your plants more often so be prepared for that.
Hope this helps someone out at some point! Feel free to check out my other journals.
