[newestguy]

Originally Posted by Mikell

I'm not sure why you asked for advice if you already have all the answers...

Definitely the poison was most noticeable with the room completely 100% sealed.

periodic venting slowed the crash

When the generator ran all new growth would sag

the room ran better when pulling negative pressure with a 6" fan filter combo.

You had a room that ran perfectly, until you added a burner. Things went down hill, until you added some fresh air, upon which it slightly improved. Then, you switched to bottled, and things took off. Seems straight forward, at least from here.

I think I even tried an active intake, turning down the intake fan with a rheostat, not positive I left that on for long, because the burner just ran non stop.

We ran an intake under a timer, 5 minutes an hour was more than sufficient.


Maybe get an O2 meter, so you can observe the action of combustion depleting the rooms oxygen. At the very least, it would verify or dismiss that as the cause.

It seems like I have all the answers but that is because I covered the easy stuff. This is definitely an issue effecting more gardens than people realize. I am posting this in an effort to help my friend, I fixed my problem. There is some by product of combustion that in the right circumstances seems to cause a very specific set of conditions. I feel like addressing it and getting it out there may help others.

As far as using an o2 meter in the room, thats an interesting idea. I do not think i have ever seen an environmental o2 meter. I do have a DO meter for water, don't imagine thats gonna help at all. Honestly, I do not suspect there is too little oxygen in there. The lamps are air cooled. The hoods are the newest generation of the magnum xxxl's (which I love) they have 4 different wing nuts that seal them down and a gasket. I am happy with the seal, but there is no doubt in my mind that some ambient air is brought into the room this way (I push air through the hoods, not pull it). I honestly think the only people that could consider a room too well sealed, to where oxygen levels dropped off, would be someone without air cooled lamps a just straight up hermitic fucking seal on everything.

One of the worst things about this problem is if anyone looked at the plants they would suspect root zone issues, PH issues, and maybe some overfeeding.

Originally Posted by the gnome

how many ppm's did you have in the room with the burner?
do you have a Co2 monitor that can tell you what your actually running?
and not a controller that you set specific ppm's by entering a set point value.
I'm not familiar with your unit so if it has a display... my bad

I had it hooked up to a atlas 7 which is a set point controller. It doesn't read out an actual PPM in the room you can set either 1000, 1250, or 1500. It shows you how high up that scale you are (ie you have it set to 1250 and it needs to enrich, the 1000 will be solid and the 1250 will blink, the solenoid or burner will be activated. I have eyed that controller a lot, in no way can I say beyond a shadow of a doubt it is accurate. I can say I have re calibrated it per there directions several times, It never seemed to make a difference, when I would bring it back inside it would read the same as when I took it out.

Really the last step I can imagine is to get another controller and run them opposite each other. I wouldn't mind having two on hand anyway, just gotta get in there and do it. I am thinking of going with a sentinel chhc4. I like that it has some extra features. Not too much benefit for me in this room but it would be nice. Best of all I could set 500-600 and let them ripen without turning on the air exchange.

[the gnome]

the road I'm going down is things are bad using a gas burner,
using the bottled co2 and no probs.
pretty much looks like the gas burner is the culprit,
now...why?
something may be going on with the controller interacting with burner..
and
if your not getting anything as far as an accurate read out of your ppms
thats a weak link in the figuring out what really going on?
since you good with the tank you may just keep going with that,
I'm naturally curious about the why's and how's of things like this.

at any rate having a good Co2 monitor is a good idea anyways.
knowing your ppms could save your life,
a guy here went in his room after the controller dumped the tank,
he passed out heading for the great gig in the sky...
luck was on his side, his wife found him and drug him out of the room.

but anyways, i use a green air SPC-1 Co2 controller/monitor with read out that is very accurate.
and i also have a green eye co2/temp/rh data logger with read out.
kinda accurate, usually within a 100-130ppms of my green air.
after calibration the green eye is good for 5-7days.
it's not a quality unit imo, compared to the green air anyways

[newestguy]

Originally Posted by the gnome

the road I'm going down is things are bad using a gas burner,
using the bottled co2 and no probs.
pretty much looks like the gas burner is the culprit,
now...why?
something may be going on with the controller interacting with burner..
and
if your not getting anything as far as an accurate read out of your ppms
thats a weak link in the figuring out what really going on?
since you good with the tank you may just keep going with that,
I'm naturally curious about the why's and how's of things like this.

at any rate having a good Co2 monitor is a good idea anyways.
knowing your ppms could save your life,
a guy here went in his room after the controller dumped the tank,
he passed out heading for the great gig in the sky...
luck was on his side, his wife found him and drug him out of the room.

but anyways, i use a green air SPC-1 Co2 controller/monitor with read out that is very accurate.
and i also have a green eye co2/temp/rh data logger with read out.
kinda accurate, usually within a 100-130ppms of my green air.
after calibration the green eye is good for 5-7days.
it's not a quality unit

I really do believe the co2 ppm controller to be acurate. While I do not have a second meter to check it against I intend to get one. I believe I will find that for all intents and purposes it was acurate. I think a good indication is that it takes approximately the amount of time it should given the flow setting of the regulator to achieve saturation.

I will get another meter before too long, but it will more than likely take me a month or so mostly based on that it will ultimately serve as an environment controller and safety backup for the air cooling. Don't think I could even get in there and hook that up now if my life depended on it.

While I can't say 100% positively that the controller is accurate I very much suspect the burner.

I am super envious of your setup. You basically have two great controllers. Don't know much about greenair but based on price and to some extent reputation I believe them to be some higher end units out there.

I honestly believe this is a somewhat common issue. I think the horticultural industry as a whole has seen this before. I believe this may be why they phased most natural gas burners out of commercial greenhouses. I haven't been able to find the article talking about that, but did find a couple others documenting ethylene damage in the horticultural industry.

https://www.greenhousegrower.com/plan...he-greenhouse/

https://www.hort.cornell.edu/mattson/leatherwood/

Besides the insta schwaag effect of long term exposure I think its interesting how it increases the speed of senescence, which is something I definitely noticed. I found that if I had a nug come off or if I took a taster branch out, they where always good, ultimately it turns out, better than once the plant reached what we would assume to be its point of maturation.

I bet you we are gonna start seeing new generators. Either low nox or some kind of completely sealed infrared arraignment. I have hopes for low nox, not sure I think the infrared ceramic element would solve the problem. The low nox stuff makes sense because they designed the burners in the 80's to combust in a different way that helped eliminate NO2 (which was combining with other gasses and causing acid rain). I have not been able to find any info on low nox as it relates to ethelyne but it stands to reason it could help eliminate the problem.

I think this is something that is gonna be less of a problem in a larger commercial space that is using a lung room. It seems like that in a larger space the generator is going to come on and stay on for a longer amount of time, ultimately achieving reliable combustion for the vast majority of the time its on. Also whatever byproducts of combustion that are produced are spread over a much larger volume of air. I certainly know people running sealed environments with lung rooms successfully, but they tend to be larger physical spaces. That is actually why I thought I could fix or minimize the problem by going down to 1 or 2 burners and periodically venting the room. It didn't help me with this generator but it makes sense why it would work, and from what I have gathered that has been an acceptable solution for some people. This is why I suspect this particular generator to be sub standard. Its hard to believe that it is operating as it was designed and yet still so reliably causing the issue. As time and money allows i will definitely try some other generators.

Basically I think any petro based co2 gen is going to create ethylene and sulfur and whatever else is causing this, but it seems like the better designed ones have less of a problem somehow. What the other companies are engineering differently I couldn't begin to tell you but it must be something. Also it seems to be reflected in price. It would seem to me that the greenair company better be doing something different if all there gear costs 3 times more (and I suspect that they are)

[newestguy]

Originally Posted by the gnome

the road I'm going down is things are bad using a gas burner,
using the bottled co2 and no probs.
pretty much looks like the gas burner is the culprit,
now...why?
something may be going on with the controller interacting with burner..
and
if your not getting anything as far as an accurate read out of your ppms
thats a weak link in the figuring out what really going on?
since you good with the tank you may just keep going with that,
I'm naturally curious about the why's and how's of things like this.

at any rate having a good Co2 monitor is a good idea anyways.
knowing your ppms could save your life,
a guy here went in his room after the controller dumped the tank,
he passed out heading for the great gig in the sky...
luck was on his side, his wife found him and drug him out of the room.

but anyways, i use a green air SPC-1 Co2 controller/monitor with read out that is very accurate.
and i also have a green eye co2/temp/rh data logger with read out.
kinda accurate, usually within a 100-130ppms of my green air.
after calibration the green eye is good for 5-7days.
it's not a quality unit

Sorry if I missed it but what generator are you using? I am impressed with the quality of the other two monitoring devices your using. I definitely want to get one of those greeneyes to keep in the room. Took me awhile to find them, but it looks like they are about 150.

[Granger2]

Buy a cheap Carbon Monoxide monitor/alarm, seal the room. See what happens. Good luck. -granger

[the gnome]

Originally Posted by newestguy

Sorry if I missed it but what generator are you using? I am impressed with the quality of the other two monitoring devices your using. I definitely want to get one of those greeneyes to keep in the room. Took me awhile to find them, but it looks like they are about 150.

I'm using a $112 tankless hot water heater on a DIY set up
the money I saved allowed me to upgrade yo a better quality controler like the green air
the burner was $450-500 and by the chart and room size it would be on 6-7min at a pop....
didn't like that because of heat issues.
mine is on for 30 seconds....max.
it has a different burner on it also, not like the mushroom thingies
it has the rows with many small holes.

btw, i noticed you mentioned nat gas as a fuel for the burner,
curious, are you using it or propane

[newestguy]

Originally Posted by Granger2

Buy a cheap Carbon Monoxide monitor/alarm, seal the room. See what happens. Good luck. -granger

I wish i would have done that! I have some CO detectors around. No way im turning that thing on with anything in there but I will turn it on when the room is empty and see if it triggers the detector.

Originally Posted by the gnome

I'm using a $112 tankless hot water heater on a DIY set up
the money I saved allowed me to upgrade yo a better quality controler like the green air
the burner was $450-500 and by the chart and room size it would be on 6-7min at a pop....
didn't like that because of heat issues.
mine is on for 30 seconds....max.
it has a different burner on it also, not like the mushroom thingies
it has the rows with many small holes.

btw, i noticed you mentioned nat gas as a fuel for the burner,
curious, are you using it or propane

I know a few people using the tankless heaters as a generator. I might have to give that a try later. Did you go run to waste on it or do you have a closed loop type arraignment?

I always used propane as a fuel for generators, was tempted to run gas for NG but never have done it. The reason I mentioned that, and the reason that I will not ever do that now, is because on the whole the horticultural industry is ditching NG and going propane. I guess they had more issues with NG generators (for them its heat I believe, the co2 is just a byproduct of heating the greenhouse)

[Gry]

What an interesting and neat thread.

[Mikell]

Alllllright. So maybe found something.

For one thing, you can try raising your temps closer to the low 80s, (tying in to the whole reason we can raise CO2, when the earths atmosphere was different and temperatures were warmer). There are calculations for specific ppm of CO2 to temp ratio, I think Snype posted them here, though I may be wrong.

Anyway,

Got this at Tea Aitch Sea Pharmer of all places. Linked Thread *Oh yeah right, we can't link to other cannabis websites. That would upset the balance of the universe. Power trippin' down the hiiiiighwaaaay.......*

Easy enough to change the url. Stupid to have to, but easy enough...

Specifically, this post

A few posts below, a novel way to test for ethylene.

Cuphea and tomato both make excellent indicator plants. Cuphea will abscise all of its flowers (Figure 2), and tomato will bend its leaves downward as if they're wilted - but they will remain turgid (epinasty) when ethylene is present even in very low concentrations. Such responses usually show up within 24 hours of exposure, although lower greenhouse temperatures can slow the response."

The initial problem sounds similar, CO2 burner in a fully sealed room, plants droop and falter.

Summarized, the CO2 burner depletes O2 levels, causing incomplete combustion of the propane, leading to ethylene and SO2 build up.

In the video you posted, the generator burns clean. What you would want to look for is the appearance after a few cycles/hours. The OP fixed it by cycling an intake 10 minutes every three hours, though on the last page of the linked thread it looks like, if you're savvy at math, you can work out a custom cycle.


Maybe?

Spurr on CO2

How that thread was never stickied....


At the least I've significantly added to the general confusion XD Maybe helped, maybe not, but some good reading if you enjoy that sort of mental racking.

[newestguy]

Those are good finds, it is an interesting problem. I think the really pertinent part in the case of this generator is that no matter how it was set up it, if it was possible to reach the desired co2 concentration the other gas would build up enough to cause the symptoms.

It seems like in most of the other threads about it people were able to fix it by periodically venting the room. That definitely did not work here. I think it would be a fair assessment to say that different generators (or maybe different room configurations) cause different amounts of the gas.

The pic that testymctester posted is a spot on perfect example of this problem, Im glad he took it. I never pulled a plant out and really documented it. I think this happens more than people think, just on varying levels.

Originally Posted by testymctester

I'm pretty sure I have experienced this issue before. I was growing in a 8x8 sealed tent with mini-split, dehuey, and CO2 generator 3 years ago. I battled round after round of vigorous plants that vegged in a different area and would then suffer when they hit this flower spot. I didn't see improvement until I turned the gas down/off.

View Image

This was the first and only sealed setup I have ever run. I have been growing with "fresh air" for the last 3 years because I couldn't figure out what was happening. It's crazy for me to see this thread now.

I just moved into a new spot and have an outside shed I want to convert into a sealed room. I'll be sure to have some fresh air in and outs this time around to see if that makes the difference.