Is Cross-Contamination a Problem? How Do You Combat It?
Cross contamination is a huge, huge problem because just like any other living thing, that's how diseases and pests any type of problem is going to propagate throughout your facility and cause massive disaster.
The first line of defense is to make sure that each of your rooms are super sealed, so the only way anything is going to come in or out is wherever there's a hole. The only holes should be the doors that you're walking in and out of, and the vents that the air is being cycled in and out of.
From the vents perspective, you should have HEPA filters in place all throughout with UV lighting to kill any mold spores that are flying in there. Then from the doorway entrances, you should have air curtains or two way entrance or negative pressure. Negative pressure is when you open the door, the air blows out to prevent cross contamination.
If you're heading into your grow and you open the door, you should feel a gust of wind in your face. This way, when you open that door, no bugs or mold spores or anything can fly in because the wind blasts it out. That's really good for everything, because you're going to have little holes everywhere. All those little holes will have jets of air blowing out the whole time, which keeps things from entering in. You have a constant pressure blowing outwards.
Then your biggest contamination spreaders are going to be people, because they're bringing stuff in from outside. In the beginning, I'd change my shoes, I put gloves on, but when you're outside, you are so covered in mold spores, pollen, mites, and bug eggs that you don't even know about. They're all over you all the time just from walking outside, because they get carried around in the wind and they're on your clothing and everything.
So if you walked into a grow and you took your shoes off, put on your grow shoes, and put a little hair net on but just walked in with all your outdoor clothes on, everything that's on you gets blasted off by the air and lands on your plants and grow.
So you need to have yourself super sealed rooms. Then when you go in person, you should have everything covered. It should be an overcoat, hair nets, booty covers for the shoes, gloves, full length coats down below the knees, full sleeves, everything covered. You also should use one per room, you shouldn't even use those room to room, because of cross contamination.
If you have a spider mite outbreak in your veg room, and you're working on it in your lab coat, then you walk into the bloom room without changing, it’s over. You just took those spider mites and put them in your bloom room. Now you're screwed, you're going to lose an entire harvest.
You should have different outfits for each room that you're going into, and you’ve got to know your operational order of where to go and where not to go based on what's happening.
Let's say you're having a powdery mildew outbreak in room five. You need to take a thousand clones that day, but also need to take care of the powdery mildew problem in room five. You don't go take care of the mildew in five, change your clothes and go into the veg room for the clones, because you're still going to have some mold spores on your skin, your face, wherever.
You're risking contamination. You always start from the room where there's no problems and work your way to the room where there is a problem, then exit. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of the ever-changing issues going on before entering.
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Cheers!
.: Adam
CEO