Once upon a time on usenet Mike Spencer wrote:
"~misfit~" writes:

If I can't afford to heat my living space there's no way I can
afford to keep my tomato plant cosy and warm - even if it's in a
very small space (about 3' by 2' and 6' tall - but uninsulated).
However after all the trouble I've gone to I night try to heat the
space to ~18º C for four or five hours a day - *if* I can devise a
small heat source for the job. (I have a spare thermostat
http://www.dx.com/p/234991 I just need a ~200w small-footprint
heater but for the life of me can't think of something I can
re-purpose for the job. It's not as if I can afford to buy anything
more for this experiment.


Hi Mike, thanks for the reply.

Consider one of those red/infra-red heat/flood lamps used to keep baby
chicks warm. I think they're 150W or 200W. One should heat that
small a space well enough that you'd need your thermostat to turn it
off occasionally. I suppose if you're way south on South Island and
your space has an outside wall below 0C, it might not be enough but
if the surrounding walls are somewhere around 5C and up, it should be
enough.

I'm really broke so any further expense is out of the question. However I
actually thought of something that I have that I can re-purpose that seems
to be working. It's my 'heavy-duty' soldering iron that I haven't used for a
year or two anyway. It's only 60w but, before I set it up in the closet it
was 12C and after an hour it was 15C and two hours later it hit 18C. (That's
just opening the door a crack to see the display.) It was around 12C
ambient, not as cold today as it has been of late - we had a cold snap. I'm
in the North Island, just South of Auckland.

You can just put it facing downward in a hanging socket, a foot or
more from the plants themselves. You can experiment with surfaces
that will absorb the IR and then warm the air by conduction --
black-painted chip board or sheet metal, maybe.

I have a computer fan in there to shake the plant a little bit (promotes
strong stem growth and will help pollinate fingers crossed). I've got the
soldering iron wired onto a piece of 4mm thick aluminium sheet, propped up
on a little stand thing at floor level. If today's any indication it'll
probably run half of the time during the day and I've got it to go off with
the lights so for 8 hours it will cool off. If I open the closet the temp
can drop 2 or 3C like a stone, in 15 seconds then it takes the little
'heater' half an hour or more to bring it up again. I'll have to keep my
nose out of there except for essential stuff or on warmer days.

It would be hard to use one of those heat lamps as the LEDs have pride of
place - right above the plant. If I'd used one I'd have had to go the
'absorbent surface' route.

Anyway, maybe a bit off-topic for this forum but I thought I'd
share. Wish me luck!

Luck!

Thanks heaps. I'll report back and let you know if I get fruit and how it
goes - if I can afford the on-going electricity. I know it doesn't sound
like much but each month that I manage to reduce my debt load - about half
of them with it increasing the other half - is a little victory for a lot of
going without. That soldering iron just more than doubled the electricity
costs of this experiment - and I may need to run more LEDs yet as the plant
grows.

We shall see....
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy
little classification in the DSM*."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)