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.
The sensors, fan, power supply and circuit board are bolted inside a water-proof polycarbonate enclosure with two sets of pipes attached.
The left side is the air inlet and the right the outlet with air pulled slowly through with a 5V fan. It was much easier to mount the equipment on one of the shelving units than start drilling holes in the stainless steel paneling of the shipping container as it will inevitably need to be moved around a bit to find the optimum position. Just need to connect the external LoRa antenna and it's ready to go.
Capt. Flatus O'Flaherty ☠
The left side is the air inlet and the right the outlet with air pulled slowly through with a 5V fan. It was much easier to mount the equipment on one of the shelving units than start drilling holes in the stainless steel paneling of the shipping container as it will inevitably need to be moved around a bit to find the optimum position. Just need to connect the external LoRa antenna and it's ready to go.