FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Last year I finally got a portable 6 x 8 foot green house to house my plants over the summer.I bought a fan and mounted it in the eaves and uses a reptile Zoo med Hygrow therm to controle the fan for cooling. The humidity function no longer worked on this unit, but the cooling worked great so the green house cooling was all set. Now for auto humidity. I looked into 120 volt controles and found that a 120 volt solenoid valve was $120 to $130 and a 120 volt humidifier controle was another $150 or so. To rich for my blood at the time, so what else could I do ? I came up with a great answer. I went to Lowes(HD has the same stuff) and bought a 24 volt irrigation solenoid for 12 bucks. Now for some reason Lowes and HD do not sell the transformer to convert 120 volt to 24 volt. This is simply one of those big plugs that many radios or cell phones have. Radio shack sells them , but not in 24 volt. I ordered one from HD that was made by the same company that makes the irrigation stuff. now all I needed was a humistat. I sent away for a Honeywell one for about $20 . The specs said it was good for 50% to 80% well the dial only went up to I think 60% but there was plenty of more turning past 60% and I found that I can controle to around 85%. I sent away for an Oasis porch misting system for $30 and 2 filters one for calcium and one for grit and got a fitting at Lowes to go from garden hose to my system. After set up the system works perfect. The fan comes on to cool and the humidity turns on as needed. It is still house water but as of yet I have had no problems with water hardness. Would love to set up this system with rain water but misting needs something like 50 psi not something most pumps can do. If anyone is interested I could post a wiring diagram if needed. Just remember the t-stat and the solenoid are just switches, give them power and they open. Take the power away and they close. Auto humidity for your green house in safe 24 volt. Good deal and for under $100 even better.