Re: Re:mites and CO2 geoff reples

if i remember aright,  ambient  co2 is 0.03%.  2% is lethal to most insects and animals, including man, but not to plants.  can anyone tell us the real figures?   as an aside, you cannot anaesthetise insects with ether or chloroform, but you can with co2, hence my suggestion  
delving back into my memory, I recall that grain silos have been suffused with co2 to kill bugs and to suppress fire hazard.  there must be a lot of literature out there about all this.  is anyone in our group an expert, and tell us ?  geoff
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Martinson <l*@execpc.com>
To: propagation@mallorn.com <propagation@mallorn.com>
Date: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 7:27 PM
Subject: Re:mites and CO2


this is just a shot in the dark, but at least it is harmless. get a large chunk of dry ice (compressed solid carbon dioxide gas), close all the windows tight and the fans off, shove it in the door, and close it quick. of course it depends on how large your greenhouse is how much co2 you will need, but what is wrong with shooting at mites in the dark?


Of course, the unknown factor here is what concentration of CO2 you need to be effective in killing mites.

However, I did some calculations on how much solid CO2 (dry ice) you would need to fill a specific volume of a room.

As an example, if you had a small sunroom that was 15ft x 10 ft x 10 ft tall, you would have a volume of 1500 cubic feet.

To completely (as in 100%) fill a room of this volume with gaseous CO2, you would need 180 pounds of dry ice. (I can send the calculations to anyone interested on how I came up with this figure.) This also presupposes that the room air would have an escape route at the top of the sunroom since the CO2, being heavier than room air would fill the room from the bottom up.

In this case, I think it would be easier to treat the plant by putting it into a large garbage bag and placing a piece of dry ice in the bottom of the bag.

Of course, if the whole room is infected...


Don Martinson
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Mailto:llmen@execpc.com
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