I converted a "regular room" to a "plant room" - although my method is a
little expensive, it has worked well for me.

I tore out all of the sheetrock and insulated all the walls and ceiling. I
installed "green rock" which is the moisture resistant sheet rock used in
bathrooms. I applied primer to the walls and then used 1 part epoxy paint on
the walls to provide a solid moisture barrier (recommended by several
commercial painting contractors, but not by the paint manufacturer). I
removed all of the trim and replaced it with molded polystyrene foam trim
(looks and paints like wood but won't rot with the high humidity). I
installed vinyl clad windows and a vinyl clad 8 foot tall by 6 foot wide
sliding glass door and used multicellular PVC for the window casings - no
chance of rot. I caulked everything with a paintable silicone caulk. I added
plumbing for a sink and a JayBird Manufacturing Hydrofogger
(http://www.jaybird-mfg.com/) which is controlled by a humidistat. The
hydrofogger takes the same tubing as a refrigerator icemaker. I also have a
thermostat for a portable oil filled heater. The room is currently sealed
off from the rest of the house by plastic sheeting, but this will soon be
replaced by a glass wall/door. The floor is ceramic tile. With the
temperatures in the single digits outside I am able to keep the night time
temperatures at 60 degrees F and daytime temperatures at 75 degrees F.
Humidity is kept constant at whatever level I want - I kept it at 70% but
was having some mildew buildup, so I lowered the humidity to 60%. This is a
little extreme, but since building codes prohibit greenhouses, I didn't have
much choice...

Sorry for rambling - hope something in here is of interest...

John
"Doug Bolton" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 15:35:27 -0500, "Ray"

wrote:

Doug,

There are many things to consider when working on boosting humidity.
Unless
the room is sealed off from the rest of the house, anything you do will
be
attempting to humidify the whole house.

It's a regular room that's totally enclosed except for an interior door
that
gives access to the rest of the house. I haven't sealed the door.

I did install a fan to vent excess humidity to the outside via clothes
dryer
ducting to a roof vent. The fan is controlled by a humidistat. When I
water the
humidity soars to 87-90% during the night and down to perhaps 75% during
the day
as the room heats to about 79°F. Night temp is about 64-68°F. Wish now I'd
installed a quieter fan (it's next to my bedroom) with 110CFM instead of
the
noisy 50CFM one. Thought it'd draw too much humidity out. No way. It'd go
all
night if I let it after I water. And that's just to get it down to 80%. So
that's a project I'm going to undertake this fall. The space under the
door is
where the fan draws air as it expels the room air. As the room dries off
from
the watering the humidity drops to perhaps 50% before the next watering.
This is
without an humidifier (or equivalent). I've found that adding an
humidifier did
even things out and prevented that sort of drop.

As this isn't a greenhouse situation I do have to be aware of the effect
of
excess humidity on the gyprock (plasterboard?) walls. Already had to redo
a part
of the single windowsill because I wasn't bailing it enough when I first
set
this up. Now that's a daily chore. And there's no water source in there to
hook
a fogger to. I did have a look at the smallest JBird. Seems way in excess
of
what I need in winter though in summer I do keep the window open to cool
the
room down so it'd probably be suitable then. 2 gallons an hour seems too
much.
Think .5 might be more suitable. Is there such a thing?

Doug

If we assume that the room IS sealed off, and has an 8' ceiling, the
volume
of the room is 480 cubic feet. At 80°F, 100% RH occurs when there is
about
250 ml of water in the air. If we assume your whole house is about 1600
square feet of floorspace, that's a volume of 12,800 cubic feet, meaning
that the 100% RH level needs almost 6.6 liters of water! If we drop that
back to 65% RH, it still means that there must be 4.3 liters of water in
the
air.

Knowing full well that your house is not likely to be totally sealed,
you've
got to figure on moisture escaping to the outside, meaning that you have
to
keep adding it. (I sure wish there was a way to know what that rate
was...)

Anyway, you're better off with something with a large capacity, and
connecting it to a humidistat, rather than getting something small and
hoping it is enough.

As an example, in a friend's greenhouse - about 2000 cubic feet and tight
except for around the door - there is a 2 gph fogger, and in the really
cold, dry days lately, it works full time to maintain 70% humidity. At
70°F, that volume only holds 0.2 gallons of water, so he's losing 10x
that
in an hour!

By the way, I put a moisture-capacity calculator on my website if you
want
to play around:
http://www.firstrays.com/moistcalc.htm