Dog House Curing Chamber

[mountbaldy]

Well, I managed to get my honey dos done for the wife yesterday and was able to put up some leaf to colour cure. I'm hoping I am doing this right...

By the way, I checked my humidity yesterday when I fired up my humidistat and it said 25%... Now that was after a very light rain. So, I'm thinking the humidifier inside during the drying process will actually help me out, or at least that's what my hope is.

Anyhow, I already had the box here from a dog house that was left at our house when we moved in. I had been eyeing up this house for quite some time to use for fermenting meat and am now using it for tobacco curing/fermenting. I cut a bigger door in one of the sides and put the old door side on the bottom (floor). The previous home owner had left me a ton of 4' x 8' x 1" foam board insulation. So I re-purposed that to use for insulating purposes. Next I mounted closet rod holders on the inside of the house to hang my stringers.


Here she is! Not bad for scrounging. I went with flat black to try and retain some heat since it gets cold here at night.


This is my humidistat/thermostat setup. Humidity reading on top and temps on the bottom. The temps are in Celsius but that version of this controller was much less than the Fahrenheit model.

Here is my enclosure to keep my controller out of the elements. Everything is pressure fit so I can easily take the housing off to check my temps/humidity.



Humidifier and small space heater below the leaf.

Here are a few plants. The one flowering here is One Sucker. I'm not too concerned with cross pollination here. I don't know of anyone else in county growing tobacco.


This is the old pool ladder stringing horse setup. Worked well for me. I used a leather needle and some fishing line to string them.


Enjoy!

Cheers!

Joe

 

[deluxestogie]

Very nice. [It does need a sign that says, "Fido," above the door.] It should work well for color-curing. You will likely need to gasket the door when you use it as a kiln.

I love the title of the thread.

Bob

 

[Knucklehead]

Nice kiln build. Good job. If you build a kiln from ... you might be a redneck.

 

[DGBAMA]

I got the cheap controller that reads C only also. I fixed it with a sharpie marker on the front of the chamber.

 

[mountbaldy]

Thanks guys! This forum has been a huge help explaining things. I've learned a lot!!

Also, Duluxestogie I will gasket the door when I use it to kiln. I'll probably need to switch things up and put the ole crock pot in their. We'll see though. I'm going to try the heater first. That little milk house heater is pretty good for that little space.

DGBAMA, I like the quick guide! That's simpler than using an app on the phone everytime. Right now I've got an indoor outdoor thermometer inside the kiln that I check occasionally. I've finally gotten somewhat familiar in converting temps. The guide is a good idea though!

I'm quickly finding out I'm running out of space. I'll probably be converting my old beer fermenting fridge into another spot to cure. I've got a bit more leaf to put up than I originally intended. I had many seedlings make it this Spring that I just found a spot in the herb garden to stick plants. Oddly enough, some of those guys did better than their siblings that I put in earlier in the season.

This season I used Jobes Tomato spikes around my tobacco plants and organic fish emulsion. Those spikes really helped out! I added them once the plants got about 3 sets of leaves. Other than that I used composted chicken manure. So far so good! We'll find out here soon!

Thanks again guys!

Cheers,

Joe