CO2 is big these days.  Carbon dioxide.  We exhale it.  We generate it as a greenhouse gas from a variety of industrialized sources.  Bad for the atmosphere because it aids in trapping heat against the Earth.  However, plants thrive in that environment.

Unless you want to sit in front of your plants and breathe sweet nothings onto your plants, you need to artificially add CO2.  Indoor gardens love a carbon dioxide concentration of 1500 PPM.

Under the rarest of occurrences, you can boost that to 10,000 PPM for 15 minutes to kill all crawling critters molesting your plants.  Be careful with this application and know thoroughly what you are doing.  Such high CO2 concentrations will kill you.

There are currently two ways to add CO2 to an environment:
1)  Get a CO2 tank and CO2 regulator to maintain a consistent PPM.
2)  Use a CO2 generator to burn propane and separate the CO2 from the propane with the assistance of an electric monitor or regulator to control the on/off of the CO2 generator.

Hydro Innovations’ CO2 Monitor fits the bill.

The CO2 Monitor is a perfect example of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).  Plug in the monitor, connect your choice of CO2 generators, wait a few seconds for the monitor to boot up, and you’re ready to roll.  I would recommend placing the monitor at the opposite corner from your generator to ensure a minimum application of CO2 to all corners of your grow room.

The monitor defaults to maintaining the environment at 1500 PPM of CO2.  It starts your CO2 generator at 1300 PPM and shuts it off at 1500 PPM.
Here we have what’s included in the package.
– 1 A/C adapter for the CO2 Monitor itself
– CO2 Monitor with power cable for your CO2 generator

You can mount the monitor to the wall for easy reading.  For myself, I set the CO2 Monitor down in a corner of my grow room, opposite my CO2 generator.

I have the CO2 Monitor connected to the same timer as my grow light.  Plants don’t really require much CO2 during lights-out, so any generated with the lights out is a waste.

Fancier CO2 Monitors (read:  more expensive) can fine-tune the PPMs in your grow room.  Really, you don’t have to.  KISS is good for you.  On at 1300.  Off at 1500.  Easy.

My only suggestion for improvement to the monitor is to incorporate its own power supply into the plug, which also powers the generator.  However, this would require some tricky electrical engineering to power the monitor and not power your CO2 generator. This would eliminate the extra AC cable.

Simple partner for your CO2 generator. Get it. Connect it. And forget about it.

Happy Gardening!
Curtis

Please note: blog posts are the opinions of independent growers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Urban Garden Magazine or its affiliates.