The orchidarium project

The inspiration to start growing orchids again came from a birding trip to Cost Rica were I spent as much time botanizing through my binoculars as I did birding. I was photographing an epiphyte laden branch in the cloud forest
on Cero de la muerte (mountain of death) at around 1200 feet and thought wouldn't it be cool if I recreate this.
The following photos are one month after setup, two years after and the inspirational photo

 

Thanks to everyone for your kind words. It's been a very rewarding project to see a lot of careful planning come together and work better than I had hoped. By studying what Orchid Karma and Ron Hanko had done I built on their basic plan and added more automation and technology while making sure the whole was aesthetically pleasing and did not look like a bad high school science project as many orchidariums do with wires hoses and duct tape every were.
They are constructed out of 1/4" cast acrylic, cast does not warp like cheaper extruded acrylic. the sliding doors are glass. lighting is four 55 watt high output power compact fluorescents, two 55K and two 67K bulbs for optimum color spectrum. Automated watering/ misting system is by Mist King. Fans are Scythe gentle typhoon, three of them are for constant air circulation and two are thermostatically controlled exhaust for temperature control. intake air is pulled through and evaporative cooler.
Temperature, fans, watering, misting, lights are all controlled by an EchoZone vivarium controller with multiple temperature and humidity probes. the controller has a wireless modem linking it to my Fios WiFi so it can be monitored and or reprogramed from any were. It logs historical temp. and humidity data in graph or chart format.
temperature range in summer is held between 60/78 and 45/72 in winter
The EchoZone controller is not cheap at around $400.00 including probes. but I feel it has been key to maintaining
a very consistent environment and producing plant growth rates and flowering results that I have not seen before in 20 years of green house growing.
Water for the orchidariums is mostly rain water with a little bit of well water for the minerals and iron content with enough DynaGrow orchid pro to bring the TDS up to about 180 PPM. I lower it to around 80 PPM in the winter.

 

The mosses are collected here in my lush northern NJ forests and probably consist of at least a half dozen species,
I found some are better suited than others. A few like live sphagnum and sheet moss grow vigorously and need to be
controlled around small plants like Trisetellas. ferns came in with the mosses and also need to be managed.
I submerge the mosses in water over night to drive out any unwanted beasties.
The moss is then pinned with U shaped floral pins to the layered and carved tree fern slab back wall and wrapped around natural vines.

 

Hi Brett
The larger case is 92cm high x 110cm wide x 60cm deep that's 36"x44"x24" for us Americans who refuse to adopt
the very logical metric system
4-90 W fluorescents produce about 2500 foot candles fear the top and about 1500 at the bottom.
55K and 76K mixed.http://ahsupply.com/ This is a link to my lighting supplier, Kim always answers the phone and he is very helpful.