FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

So I have a basic pop-up greenhouse shelf thing that I bought on Amazon. I've been growing highland plants quite successfully in it and have accomplished good nightly temp drops using ice packs, the only problem is that the nightly temp drops don't sustain for very long and quickly bounce back.... so I decided to buy some reflective (bubble-based) duct insulation, which if nothing else will direct even more light back at the plants. Check it out:



Shot with plants (before doing the bottom of the upper level and the door)



Upper level with small cutout for new air intake (from fan on lower level) - may fill this more, haven't decided yet.



Door complete & zipped. The top is free of insulation since #1 cold air drops and #2 I wanna be able to view the plants


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Looks good. You might want to try some Tupperware with some frozen water in them . The larger blocks of ice might last longer.

Hungry Plants wrote:Looks good. You might want to try some Tupperware with some frozen water in them . The larger blocks of ice might last longer.

maybe, but where would I put them? I already have to cram ice packs in weird ways :p


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If you slide the top tray to one side or the other you could put it next to it

Hungry Plants wrote:If you slide the top tray to one side or the other you could put it next to it

Yeah but both sides also have to be cool because I have Hamatas on both sides ha


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I'm very curious to see how well this works. I just set up a mini greenhouse for lowlanders and I'd like to insulate it so I (hopefully) don't have to run the heater at night. Please let us know!

nimbulan wrote:I'm very curious to see how well this works. I just set up a mini greenhouse for lowlanders and I'd like to insulate it so I (hopefully) don't have to run the heater at night. Please let us know!

I've found that it heats up a lot faster too. I keep mine in a spare closet downstairs and I use a marshydro LED light (which has a fan built in and naturally puts off some heat). I'm able to reach/maintain my daily highs fairly easily. What really matters though are the nightly lows. Tonight will be the first test with the upper level and front door flap insulation in place. Will report back with some sexy charts tomorrow. Hoping it goes well.


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A couple of wire coat hangers stretched across the top and you could rest the ice block on them.

Hungry Plants wrote:A couple of wire coat hangers stretched across the top and you could rest the ice block on them.

Maybe, but I don't want any of it to drip in ha.


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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I'm thoroughly impressed with the results!


In 15 minutes it dropped TEN DEGREES (very awesome)!



Better still is that it's only gone up to 62 degrees since I put the ice packs in at 10pm (my target is around 60 degrees), that's only an increase of 4.5 degrees off the low.



Here's the weekly chart... you can see a HUGE difference. Not only did it get colder, but it also maintained much more efficiently. It would already be anywhere from 67-69 degrees by this time.


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It actually doesn't look that different on the weekly graph to me. While I see the temperature dropping a little lower, it seems to rise again at about the same rate.

nimbulan wrote:It actually doesn't look that different on the weekly graph to me. While I see the temperature dropping a little lower, it seems to rise again at about the same rate.

Relatively same curve, but over 4 extra hours or so... hard to tell because the weekly graph compresses it.


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