after nearly a decade of use, am going with a chest freezer for my next kiln, and consider dumping the old one.
Why, door seal keep failing. Several changes for the new one :
- abandon the outside water jug for refilling the crockpot - does not work, tap water has a lot of dissolved air, and formation of even a small air bubble in the tubing kills the siphon.
- abandon the hot-water thermostat, rusted out after about 5 years (how?, unknown), but not needed anyway, Ranco temp controller works absolutely great. Initial reason for this cutoff thermostat was to prevent kiln heating above 135+F deg while kiln-fermenting air-cured leaf and destroying enzymes needed for long term aging.
- any size crockpot works great, producing adequate heat/humidity for fermenting (aging) leaf. Open top crockpot releases too much humidity, very slight offset lid will work OK, but found that just laying a loose piece of plastic board on the crockpot works great (leaks just enough moisture). When I started using this kiln for flue-curing, even the largest crockpot, barely got to the 165 deg needed, consider using 2 crockpots, need to adjust electrical for this.
- add a drain to the bottom of the kiln. Frequently condensation on the walls & door accumulated and puddled. I will build a wood frame under the kiln, and place a shallow pan under to collect water, then I can dump this.
- Just one time, over packed leaf (bundled too tightly) for flue-curing, had the entire batch bloomed with black mold overnight, (had to trash this, and bleach-clean entire kiln). Will add more fans, increase upper exhaust pipe/valve to one inch or larger, use empty crockpot for flue-curing, and pack leaf better, monitor closely.
Quickly learned that I needed to add water to the crockpot every 2nd day when kiln-fermenting, with a 2nd crockpot, maybe go longer. Not a big deal anyway. When crockpot went empty of water, leaf went crispy-dry, only took a couple hours after refilling the crockpot for leaf to go back to proper case. No harm to the leaf. This happened often when out-of-town for a long weekend.
I will probably keep the old kiln for a while - am growing more bright leaf strains now, and may be handy to have a 2nd kiln for flue-curing additional batches at the same time.
