Fan failed during late flowering - consequences of extreme heat??

[The Dongster]

Hey gang,

I have a cab with 5 flowering plants under a 400W MH (and a supplemental 40W CFL), at 8 weeks now with 1-2 weeks left for the strains growing (NL#13, Romulan, Sapphire, and Jack Herer/Sweet-Tooth x C99). Buds have been looking great, with a sweet perfumey smell quite unlike the stereotypical (skunky) odor of pot plants.

Anyway, last night the extension cord powering the fans got kicked out of the wall without my knowledge, so for the first 3 hours this morning the lights were on with zero ventilation. It was HOT AF in there, and the smell had become that greenish odor of microwaved buds (gross).

So I immediately killed the lights for 2 hours to let the cab cool down and give the plants a break. Surprisingly there's been minimal leaf-wilt or burns evident (3 hours later now), but that "odor" remains (not yet replaced by the natural perfume of terpenes being released), and I'm now wondering about the bud quality and prognosis.

Any experience with short exposures of extreme heat due to a ventilation issue while lights are still on? Are the trichomes or their contents eff'd up or permanently altered now? Just wondering if I should proceed with letting the plants finish their last 1-2 weeks, or call it now and harvest early. Maybe it's too soon to say.

Any comments would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[redlaser]

I’ve done heat treatments on plants for mite prevention and found they can tolerate 118 degrees without a fan blowing air at all. At 120 is where I would see losses, usually on the highest or outside part of the plant.

Using a fan would make the plant dry out on the edges at 118 on up. Takes a day to see all the damage usually unless it’s severe.

Good luck on the losses I guess, no fun when your at the finish line and that happens.

 

[voidpainter]

You fried some terpenes, if you say 2 more weeks to go they should be fine. I bet they’ll start smelling nice again on the next morning after dark period.

 

[aridbud]

Can't use oscillating fan???

 

[The Dongster]

@redlaser: Thanks for weighing in with your heat treatments for spider mites, I didn't even know that was a thing! The air temperature of my upper cab certainly surpassed 150F, and some relatively-minor bud damage became evident on the tallest buds over the next several hours (turned brown/gray). And yes, it may take another day or two for the heat damage to fully show itself. But I'm cautiously optimistic that it won't be too bad, and I'm hopeful the buds and trichomes will bounce back (I won't harvest early; it's simply too early still).

@voidpainter: Yeah, I certainly did that! But the plant and flower tissue look like they've only suffered superficial damage and, like all plants, they are programmed to keep on trucking -- so yes, I'm very hopeful that the trichomes and terpene machinery will gear up in response to what happened, thanks for the encouragement.

@aridbud: My cab is a 2-door wooden wardrobe that I retrofitted some time ago. The design features two 4" air-intake fans/holes cut out of the lower back panel (spaced apart), and a 4" exhaust hole on one side near the top - with an external, vertically-mounted 4" Vortex fan (an awesome fan btw) connected by a 90-degree PVC elbow, sucking the air out of the unit at 177CFM and forcing it through a homemade C-pellet canister filter made from furnace-duct parts (got the design from an icmag thread here, like 10 years ago!) It's a pretty robust set-up overall and has served me very well, with the air-flow maintaining internal temperatures of 75-80F when everything's running. But yeah, having the fans and lights on separate powerlines/timers was a vulnerability for sure; I was somewhat kneecapped by power loads from the A/C unit and a 1000W lamp in the other room, having to spread the cab power consumption between two circuits.