Hi everyone,



Just thought I'd post some pics of Frasier's misting set-up to follow up with the threads below from epollak and John_Smith concerning misting and dripper set-ups.



We had initially gotten a Rainmaker Junior and set up two misting nozzles in Frasier's cage, one on each end. We had programmed the timer to start the misters 8 times a day for 1 minute at a time, which proved to be way too much; the plants were flooded with water and because Frasier's cage has a solid floor, setting up a drainage system would not have been a simple task.



So, we simply reduced the number of cycles to 4 times a day, which was perfect for maintaining humidity and keeping the plants happy. The little bit of water that accumulated on the floor had time to evaporate during the day.



The problem we had noticed with the misting was that Frasier hated having the mist touch his body, despite the fact that the mist was so fine that you could not even see it. However, I have often observed Frasier lapping water droplets off the leaves of his plants (I work from home), so we were assured that Frasier was getting enough water anyway.



Just recently, the pump for our Rainmaker died and so we were forced to replace the current misting system with something else. We weren't very happy with the amount of noise the pump produced, so we were less than willing to spend another $50 or so to replace the pump. We had often heard of setting up a misting system using a sprinkler valve and timer, so we decided to try that. We ended up having to order these online because there are no irrigation products available in Vermont (not much of a demand for it, I guess), so while we waited for that, I misted the cage by hand, the same way the misting system was before -- 4 times a day, for 1-2 minutes at a time.



This is when I noticed that the misting alone wasn't giving Frasier as much water as he wanted, because whenever I offered him the water by letting the water dribble out of the nozzle over his mouth, he seemed pretty thirsty. Because I was providing as much water as the misting system was, this told me that the misting system alone wasn't enough.



We wanted to continue with misting because it makes the plants lush and raises humidity, so we decided to keep the current system, but simply add a dripper head. Because we were ordering irrigation parts anyway, we went ahead and ordered some. While we were shopping, we also found these nifty plant foggers and decided to give those a try, too.



We ended up leaving one of the Rainmaker nozzles in its place (on the left side), but removed the one on the right and replaced that with a dripper head; the head has 8 outlets and has an adjustable flow rate. The pic shows what the drip looks like when it is turned up all the way, but we set it so that it just lets out a steady stream:







Here is a close-up of the Rainmaker nozzle:





We installed one of the plant foggers on the wall in the middle of the cage and we angled it so that it sprays to the side. This allows the chinese evergreen (the big plant on the floor) to get covered in mist and at the same time, Frasier doesn't get any mist on him when he is basking:





Here is the entire set-up:





Sorry for the verbal diarrhea, this happens to be something I've been researching a lot lately and I was excited to share my findings.




-----
Julie Williams

www.baskingwonders.com

[ Show Entire Thread ]