The health and value of your cannabis yields are highly dependent on your plants growing with the right humidity around them. Here, discover what factors you need to consider when selecting a dehumidifier that will create and maintain the optimal conditions for cannabis growing.
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The global medical and recreational cannabis industry continues to grow and thrive with each passing year, with estimates suggesting that it will be worth €75 billion by . However, for cultivators to earn their potential share of this rapidly swelling pot, they need to produce the greatest possible yield from their plants.
Cannabis growing is a delicate equation. Without the correct balance of moisture intake, light, temperature and more, the amount of product developed can be heavily compromised, restricting its value on the open market.
This makes finding an effective way to manage the humidity around your cannabis plants in your greenhouse or grow room critical to getting the most out of your products. Here, we will illustrate the importance of humidity in the cannabis-growing process, and what factors influence the effectiveness of a Calorex dehumidifier in these environments.
Like numerous other types of plant, the humidity needs of the cannabis plant changes depending on what stage of its growth it is in. At the earliest points of its life, the plant demands a high degree of moisture from the air while its roots begin to form:
As the roots grow and strengthen, you will want to restrict the amount of moisture in the air to encourage more water to be absorbed by its nutrient-rich soil. But, as noted, this is a less-than-straightforward balancing act.
Too much moisture in the air can encourage the development of unwanted diseases and stifle the nutrient absorption of the plant. Too little humidity and the plant might dry out, hurting its quality, and cause it to become too heavily reliant on moisture from the soil, potentially causing it to develop nutrient burn.
Of all the consequences to avoid, the development of mould and fungus can significantly hurt the volume of healthy buds you yield, and the quality of the ones you are able to harvest. The two most prominent of these are:
1. Bud rot
Bud rot (botrytis cinerea) is a mould that develops in the dense cores of cannabis buds, causing them to discolour and turn mushy. This kills the value of the bud, and can potentially lead to the spread of dangerous spores that infect other plants in your facility.
2. White powdery mildew
White powdery mildew is a fungal infection spurred by high-humidity environments, which badly hurts the health of cannabis plants and restricts their growth, particularly in the flowering phases.
If you would like to know more about the influence humidity has on cannabis growing, make sure you read “The Impact of Uncontrolled Humidity on Cannabis Growing”.
Factors in determining the right climate control solution
Due to the power that humidity holds over the prospects for cannabis growing, implementing an effective, dependable climate control system is vital to optimising their environment at all stages of your plants’ growth.
At the heart of this should be a carefully selected and positioned dehumidifier. Designed over decades of experience managing harsh and hostile indoor environments, these condense dehumidifiers help you meet the moisture needs of your plant on their journey to delivering the best possible yield:
Maintain the desired temperature and humidity throughout the entire lifecycle
Distribute temperature evenly
Swiftly anticipate changes in the growing environment
Remove excess air moisture and heat loads
Ensure constant air movement
Prevent mildew, fungus and mould
However, to secure these benefits it takes more than simply acquiring a dehumidifier and placing it randomly in your greenhouse or facility. There are numerous factors that need to be considered to select the ideal system to meet your climate control requirements:
The scale of your facilities is critical to determining how powerful your dehumidification system needs to be and where it is positioned within your storage area. The larger an area, the more air that is filling it, and consequently the more moisture that needs to be absorbed – this demands a more robust, sizeable unit than a more compact space.
If the dehumidifier is not powerful enough to support your entire cannabis growing space, this uneven coverage will allow microclimates to form and humidity levels to spike in certain locations. As noted earlier, it only takes one plant to develop bud rot for the infection to be spread via spores to the remainder of your crops.
The layout of your structure is also a key consideration. If a room is particularly long, it may require multiple dehumidifiers spaced evenly apart to create the circular airflow necessary to protect the plants from mould and fungus. Meanwhile, in tall rooms, growers may want to duct air towards the ground to achieve the circular motion this way.
This makes it crucial to engage with specialists like our team at the Dantherm Group, who will assess your setting and refer you to the most appropriate dehumidifier for your particular structure. This could be a desiccant dehumidifier or a condensation dehumidifier depending on your set up and the size of the space where the grow is taking place.
The amount of cannabis growing in the area will also factor in the power and capacity required from your dehumidification system. The more plants that you have dispersing water into the atmosphere through their leaves, the greater volume of moisture in the air that has to be managed.
The number of plants you house in your facility, and where they are kept, will play a key role in determining what type of dehumidifier you require, how many you need, and where they should be positioned to deliver the most complete coverage.
Depending on what methodology you apply to cannabis growing – Screen of Green (SCROG), Sea of Green (SOG), Low Stress Training (LST) or other – will also help guide the type of dehumidifier you use, due to the varying humidity demands of each technique.
Additional methods to control humidity
Alongside implementing a capable, well-configured dehumidification system into your cannabis-growing facility, there are a number of other techniques you can apply to manage the humidity and temperature levels of your plants:
Lowering humidity
Increase ventilation in your facility: the introduction of mobile fans can increase the total amount of airflow in the area, dropping the humidity and lessening the potential for dangerous mould or fungi to grow and spread.
Monitor soil moisture levels: soggy soil will tend to raise the humidity of the greenhouse or grow room, so manage this with remote monitors.
Slight defoliation of plants: trimming the overly leafy plants can decrease the humidity of the surrounding area.
Increasing humidity
Introducing a swamp cooler: these devices lower the overall temperature of the area while increasing the humidity.
IMPORTANT: While an air-conditioner can reinforce the work done by a dehumidifier, it should not be viewed as a like-for-like substitute. An air-conditioner is built to cool the air, not remove water from it. Also, built-in air-conditioners will rarely run at night, meaning humidity can increase during these hours and allow the development of mould and mildew.
The company is the world’s best cannabis greenhouse dehumidifier for sale supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
The quality, consistency and value of your cannabis yield is highly dependent on how well you can control the humidity around your plants. If you don’t want to leave anything to chance, get in touch with our team about introducing the ideal Calorex dehumidifier for your project.
Our engineers, backed by decades of expertise and experience, will closely assess your installation to determine a system capable of achieving optimal humidity levels at all times. Our robust, dependable units will maintain the conditions you require to produce the healthiest and largest yield possible every harvest.
Our systems can also incorporate data collection, remote monitoring and multiple sensors, giving you better oversight of your crops day-in and day-out.
Indoor grow rooms are naturally humid, due to the plants’ transpiration process. All plants constantly release water vapor to the air, as part of their growth process. So, without including humidity control as part of your environmental control, any grow room will become very humid. Especially in dense grow rooms with intense lighting, common in cannabis grow rooms.
Unfortunately, high humidity levels lead to mold development, such as botrytis (aka bud rot), and powdery mildew. Needless to say, mildews can destroy yields and reduce the overall quality of your product. In the case of cannabis, it can even lead to products being disqualified for sale or distribution.
But humidity diseases aren’t the only problem humidity creates. Even without molds, high humidity makes it hard for plants to develop.
In order to take in and break down nutrients, the plants must transpire. However, high levels of relative humidity make it difficult, or even impossible for them to do so. So the plants are left in a state of stress, inhibiting growth and reducing the overall yield size and quality.
The most important factor to consider when buying a dehumidifier for your grow room, is to ensure your dehumidifier size matches the transpiration rate in your facility.
Matching your moisture removal, with your plants’ transpiration rate, is critical. If you don’t remove enough water from the air within a given period, humidity will ultimately climb up to 100%. So, it’s important to consider your maximum transpiration rate, meaning the period when your plants release the most water vapor.
There are several factors that determine how much your plants will transpire.
First, is the amount of plant matter in your grow room. So, the number of plants, as well as the amount of foliage on each plant. Some growers use leaf area index (LAI) as a metric for this.
Second, is the climate conditions in your growing environment. Temperature and humidity levels both have an impact on transpiration rates. So you should know what your optimal conditions are, as well as your ability to maintain them. You can then figure out how much your plants will transpire under these conditions.
Third, is the size of your grow room. A small space, or small grow room, will be easier to treat for humidity, than a large one. Both due to the amount of plant matter, and due to the sheer size of the space.
Once you gather all of this information, you can better understand what you’re standing up against, in terms of moisture.
One very important factor, that’s often overlooked, is the design conditions of different dehumidifiers. This is crucial, as the amount of water extraction really depends on the climate conditions.
For example, a DG-X is designed to remove 4.2 gallons per hour (~968 pints per day), at 80°F and 60% relative humidity. These conditions are very common in indoor grow rooms, so you can count on these figures being relevant to your grow.
It’s important to note that it’s always easier to remove moisture in higher temperatures and higher humidity levels. So, if dehumidifier manufacturers present extraction rates at hotter or more humid conditions, it won’t be able to reach the same effectivity at lower levels.
In short – dehumidifiers designed for colder and drier conditions, are more powerful than those designed for hotter and more humid conditions.
Energy is one of the biggest expenses in indoor growing. So optimizing your energy consumption has a major impact on your bottom line.
Different dehumidifiers and humidity control systems have different efficiency levels. The best way to compare dehumidifiers, would be to measure the water extraction per kWh. For example, a DG-X, which runs on 4.8 kW, removes 0.87 gallons of water per kWh.
As mentioned above, it’s important to compare dehumidifiers under similar conditions, or you risk getting wildly different results.
Simply removing moisture from the air is just one aspect of dehumidification. Without powerful fans and proper air distribution, your dehumidifier won’t be able to treat the entire space. Many dehumidifiers fail to take this factor into consideration, leaving growers with local humidity treatment and creating different conditions in different areas in the grow room.
Molds only need one plant that’s surrounded by high humidity. Once they develop, they can spread freely throughout the grow room, infecting more plants. Even if humidity is kept under control in their area.
So, making sure your dehumidifier reaches all corners of your grow room is very important.
However, there’s another aspect to air distribution you can take advantage of with a good dehumidifier – air circulation.
DG-X, DryGair’s dedicated grow room dehumidifier, offers a patented air circulation system that disperses air in all directions at once. Combined with powerful fans, this ensures uniform conditions everywhere in the space.
When all plants are grown under the exact same conditions, you ensure flower consistency and high quality, no matter where you place your plants.
This is a great addition, as every grow room needs fans anyway. Airflow is important in stimulating plants and dispersing humid microclimates which can undermine even the best humidity control.
So, using a dehumidifier with a well-designed airflow concept can reduce your need for additional fans while improving your air distribution.
Grow room space is precious and expensive. So, any piece of equipment or machinery should be as compact as possible, without compromising capacity. A compact dehumidifier can fit snuggly between your plants. But you may also want dynamic placement options, to ensure you can optimize your grow space.
DG-X, for example, has several placement options you can choose from. It can be wheeled, if necessary, or even suspended from the ceiling to free up floor space.
DryGair is the leading manufacturer of horticulture dehumidifiers. As such, the DG-X, which is designed specifically for commercial grow rooms, rather than small grow tents, is one of the best choices out there.
The DG-X is engineered by agronomists and grow room climate experts to provide the most effective and efficient humidity control, under the most common growing conditions.
Using a DG-X for humidity control in your grow room provides the best air quality and growing conditions for your plants. It prevents humidity problems and contributes to homogenous bud growth.
However, the most important benefit a dehumidifier provides is energy savings. By controlling humidity, using a dedicated and efficient dehumidifier, you can drastically reduce your air conditioner or HVAC usage. It frees up your temperature controllers to control temperature, without relying on them to help remove moisture. Tweaking your protocol in this way can save as much as 50% on energy!
For more information, please visit Industrial Dehumidifier Supplier.