If you ever have the misfortune of getting powdery mildew, a sulfur burner may come in handy. You can buy the sulfur (web search for sulfur prill) for as little as $10 plus shipping. The least expensive commercial burner I could find was online, around $65, plus shipping. To make a sulfur burner, one must construct a hanging heater that melts sulphur prills. Sulfur melts at 239 F (115 C) and boils at 832 F (444 C). A 100 watt flood light (green glass if you run in your flower room at night) or ceramic heater element for pet reptiles both produce enough heat to melt and vaporize sulfur. Since it is a BURNER it should be made of non-flamable materials (no wood or plastic). First, get good and stoned. :jj: Now, gather some basic materials. All you need is two large metal coffee cans, a soup can, a ceramic light base and a flood light or ceramic heat emitter, a power cord, and some chain. A few screws, basic tools, and a metal junction box and wire clamp are also required. If you don't have these already you can buy them at stores most towns have. Here are some materials I used To start, I basically made a lamp. I cut a hole in the bottom of a coffee can and mounted the ceramic light base inside the coffee can. Then I made a bracket for the soup can so that it would suspend the can over the heater. Next I cut out the bottom of the second coffee can, and tabbed it to the first, taping the tabs and screwing them. Finally, I drilled some holes in the bottom of the can for ventilation, and put some hangers on it. VOILA Time for another :redbong:
Smells like hell itself Although sulfur is non-toxic, it is unpleasant. I plugged it in and it melted the sulfur and was wafting white vapor within 20 minutes. The can is suspended about a quarter inch off the ceramic heat element. I let it run for 6 hours, lights on, fan on, and it stunk up the whole place pretty good. I still have visible mold in the flower room though. I think I need to run it with the exhaust fan off to let the rooms get good and full. Here's melted sulphur, which then re-coagulated when it cooled. Here are the poor plants, which look so bad because I accidentally sprayed them with bleach. :danger:
The Results BBB, I hope you never need to make one, but if you do it will work as advertised. Two weeks after a good solid burn for 12 hours with fans off, and no visible sign of PM. I put at least 2 inches of sulfur prill in the soup can and let her rip for the entire lights off cycle. The two remaining plants are thriving (despite the bleach) and NO sign of PM.
That's what I like to hear! I will be making my own version of this soon to deal with my PM issue. How big is your room?
Not big enough :5eek: Seriously, my op is 4 closets, bout 4'X3' each, 8' ceilings. Small. I think this will work in much larger spaces though.
I just started using my diy sulphur burner tonight. It's similar to yours but I followed a diy thread at 420mag.com that utilized a 6" recessed light fixture as the base and a soup can. I also used a ceramic reptile heat element. I'll be running it for approx. 2.5 hrs. per lights off cycle every day for a week and will report back how well it had worked for me. ky PM problem has had me shut down for months now. I hope this works out and solves my problem permanently.
This is the thread I followed in order to build mine. DIY Sulphur Burner Mine looks pretty much exactly like this one except I used a ceramic heating element instead of the green flood light. All in all I spent about $25 including the sulphur. That's less than 1/2 the cost of purchasing the least expensive professionally manufactured unit. So far it seems to be working as it's supposed to. Within about 10-15 minutes from the time it comes on it starts wafting sulphur vapors into the air. I am using it in a 11' x 7' room. When the burner is on the exhaust fan shuts off. I have it timed so that it comes on three separate times during the lights out cycle, in 1 hr. intervals. The sulphur smell isn't all that bad. It smells like someone let off some fireworks nearby but it doesn't really bother me. :redbong: