I’ve been kickin around the house during this covid lockdown and decided to take a shot at building a dedicated drying chamber for my grow and future grows.
At one point, I was thinking about buying a small tent to hang-dry buds before moving on to a dry trim and jars for curing. Then the quarantine happened.
So, my plan has been to not spend money and see what I can do about building a workable drying chamber / curing jar storage space. A makeshift cannabis wine cellar if you will.
Here is my progress thus far. I have spent a total of $5 on PVC and closet rod sockets. Everything else is scrap from a second shelf that I tore down to make room for my grow tents.
In picture #2, I am planning to run a 4" flex hose across the entire length of the box, at the top. I will then perforate the hose which will connect a Infinity Cloudline T4 set to kick the fan on whenever the RH is above 64%
The far right side of the box is left open slightly, which you cans see in picture 3. There is a piece of wood at the top on the outside and a piece of wood at the bottom on the inside as well as a layer of bugscreen between the two. The idea here is to allow fresh air to be drawn in, that fresh air will pour in from the top (away from the buds).
That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I need to fire up the roto-zip to cut a 4" hole on the left side of the box for the vent hose. The fan will be mounted on the left side as well.
I have not done anything for smell controll… YET. Going to see how bad the smell is without running any carbon, my fear is this area is directly below the closet in the master bedroom. Both wifey and I are working remotely so, good time to experiment. If it does smell, I will run the output of the 4" Cloudline fan into the air-intake of my flower tent and let it filter the air that way.
Am I forgetting anything? Thoughts?
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As long as your ambient temperature isn’t to high say above 72°F you should be good! I’m tagging along to see how it goes down 
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Righton @Dbpooper !! A couple weeks ago I put a sensor in there (pictured) to record the temp and RH range. Temp was a solid 62 degrees and RH was right around 58!! Ideal!
I recently changed the covers for the front opening. Before I had some scrap play that was getting the job done, but as the project evolved I switched to 1/8" thick hardboard. It’s a bit flimsy, but its also light. Time will tell how it holds up, I’m concerned that it might warp? If it does, I’ll just get new stuff. The hard board was $6 at home depot and I asked them nicely to cut it to size so it fit in my ride.
4" hose arrived today!! Was expecting it tomorrow. Got messy with the zip saw but managed a perfect cut for snug-fit of the hose. I think took some 2x4 scrap and wedged the hose into the top corner with it, drove a screw in to hold it in place. If I need to replace the hose for some reason, it will come out easy.
The end of the hose is sealed shut with ducttape and I used a staple-gun to make it fit flush with the right side of the box to hold it in place. One staple did the job perfectly.
I will wait until I have the fan hooked up before I make any perforations. I want to start conservatively so as to not ruin the hose, and will closely monitor the drying process for the first batch of plants,… more holes?
Fan arrives next week, and my plants are finishing early due to some … learning experiences with my first grow in 20 years. After that, the drying cabinet will be done!!
This space will also serve as my long-term storage solution for curing jars etc.
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Right on man sounds like a solid plan!
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Looks excellent. I love it !!!
Nice work you have done there
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I’m interested to see it. I’ll be drying some herb sometime soon myself.
I read your post and it got the gears turning. I will tag you so you can follow my build any advice is good advice. Did you run the 4" ducting to draw air from the cabinet evenly? What fan did you get?
That was exactly my line of thinking when I ran the 4" ducting across the top corner. I had initially cut a 6" hole to draw air out of the cabinet, but the ducting was flush and didn’t run across the length of the tent.
I was concerned the 6" fan would be too powerful, even on low, and would create a wind tunnel that might cause uneven drying, or overdrying the buds nearest to the fan.
Current conditions of a “sealed”, empty cabinet. “sealed” because there are plenty of small gaps here and there “designed” (hahaha) to allow fresh air to be drawn in.
Shot of my backup temp/humid sensor and dangling Cloudline sensor.
The iPower sensor is temporary, I have another sensor that has bluetooth and will talk to my phone. I will be monitoring RH very closely and am ready to poke more holes in my 4" duct hose if I need to move more air.
Another picture with a camping LED lantern strategically placed.
I am harvesting my flower tent in 6 hours, i’ll be back with a few more photos afterward 
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As promised, I harvested my first grow in almost 20 years. Felt like an absolute beginner again, but I do remember this smell!!! 
So far, the drying cabinet is behaving as intended. I chopped and hung all 5 plants today and secured them with zip-ties and they fit quite nicely.
If I grow plants any taller, I might have an issue, but moving forward… next grow is 4 plants, after that perpetual grow of 2 plants in SCROG so. Fingers crossed I’m not building or buying new accommodations for a drying chamber.
Temp and RH began at 70F and 53%. Shortly after I closed the drying chamber the RH quickly climbed up to 60…61…62…63… FAN … 64…63…FAN OFF … 62… 61
Fan stayed on for maybe 30-60 seconds. The basement STANKS though. Smell is not detectable upstairs (not that it matters right now), but I think eventually I will need to route the 4" fan output into the flower chamber to filter it.
I’ll be sure to keep this thread updated, but thus far I’m really happy with my quarantine project using nothing but scrap wood and some small items from the home de pot. I don’t count the 4" cloudline fan as part of the budget because I can use that fan anywhere.
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Looks Great, as far as changing the pvc pipe mine is just a piece of angle iron with a few holes drilled for hooks. Quick and easy.
Are you looking to quick dry or something because if you aren’t then I don’t see any need for all that air movement. I use a 4x2 tent that’s around 5 feet tall. I can dry to medium to large plants ata time in there and I have a clip fan on low pointing outward I. The duckting hole in the tent. It acts as a small exhaust and creates a great environment inside the tent around 65° and 65%RH and I’m able to get there with just one 6 inch clip fan nothing blowing on the plants. Makes em dry in about 6-10 days. Lovely. So I think less is kore when it comes to drying chamber. Just slight exhaust and stable temps and humidity is all you need for a simple non scientific way to dry.
I am not. There is not alot of air movement in this cabinet. It’s a 4" fan that powers up to speed 5 (of 10) only when the inside sensor detects the RH at 63%
When RH hits or exceeds 63%, the fan spins up for … 30-40 seconds and my RH dips back down to 61%
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Oo very cool man. That’s a great idea. I keep mine. Ambient and when it drops to about 55%th my plants done. I don’t force it back up or anything
I suppose we’ll see if it’s a great idea I hope it works the way I intended.
The motivation was to have a somewhat automated process of maintaining a steady RH% for the wet harvest to do its thing and slowly dry.
I read somewhere, probably this forum, that a RH% at or above 65% begins to invite mildew/mold.
Eventually, the RH% will cease to his that 63% mark and stabilize around 60%, that’s when I’ll check the stems, dry trim, and cure in jars while continuing to watch the process with scrutiny.
A little back story: 20yrs ago I completed my first grow, covertly, in my condo walk-in closet. It was a mess!! hahah but I managed to get a decent crop only to lose most of it to mold during the drying/curing process. I HAD NO CLUE! I don’t think I even a hygrogometer.
This time? yea i’m going to over-do it!! 
I use mine every dry, works perfect. I have four plants in mine right now going into jars in a few days once my Boveda packs arrive.
Here is my tiny stealth dry room. (a large suite case) I can dry about 3-4 zips in it.
I have a $10 fish tank air pump mounted inside it. It pumps 1 liter of air per min.
or 60 per hour. which is the volume of the suite case. so the air in the case gets tuned over every hour.
I keep the suit case in a 70 degree air conditioned room. room rh is about 40. the suitcase when full runs 70/55rh. Notice air pump is at the top (heat rises) bottom of suite case is left open to let fresh air in… I have a 25’ air hose that I run over to my tiny tent, that has carbon filter. I guess you can run the air hose anywhere. No smell and no one fools with a suitcase.
