Growing mushrooms in shipping containers requires good control of humidity, temperature, particle contamination and C02 levels. This initial container has been set up on the Island of Anglesey (Ynys Mon), North Wales to test the custom built control system and evaluate the viability of growing gourmet mushrooms in shipping containers.
The recent cold weather sent our electricity bill into the ionosphere so we put an insulated wall inside the container to effectively shrink the fruiting room to 3 ft deep. Fortunately, we've still got the clean air fan, a LED striplight and 240 v power plugs. Also, by placing the LoRa antenna up against the air filter, the mushrooms were still able to communicate with the outside world.
A few days ago, looking at these data graphs, we noticed that Co2 levels would rise to about 700 ppm and then flatten off, holding steady at this value. This is NOT GOOD for the mushrooms as it seems to indicate that they stop producing CO" when the atmosphere reaches this level and presumably stop growing as well. Fortunately, there is a fan in the system, which we then started to use and monitor the results. Since the outside temperature is about 1 degrees C on average at the moment, it's important to minimise the airflow into the container so that there is just enough airflow to moderate the CO2 levels and no more as otherwise heating costs would escalate. We're keeping a careful watch on electricity consumption and will need to make a calculation to assess how many mushroom blocks are required in one batch to justify the heating costs or if a false wall should be installed in the container for the testing stage.
Good question. The previous owner of our shipping container was getting some spoilt batches due to contamination from somewhere and was not sure where it was coming from He thought that it could be due to dust being blown into the box as it was sited on a dusty farm yard. Alternatively, it could have been from poorly sterilised blocks at the supplier's plant. We chose to measure the general contaminants, not being too concerned what they were as if the sensor picked up dust then there are probably plenty of foreign spores in that dust. We also wanted to see what effect walking into the container had and if we could keep particulates down by keeping the floor wet. There's also a fan for bringing in fresh air which blows through a filter. If the filter fails for some reason, we'll be able to detect that. There are probably some other reasons that I cant think of right now!
Curious: why particulates? Seems like they could be any number of sources. Spores? Molds? Air pollution? Dust?