Handling Perlite
Experimenting with a cultivation setup that required perlite, and I must say, holy dust.
Any time dust is involved, it’s important to understand what kind of dust it is and whether or not it’s hazardous to your health. In our case, perlite dust is an irritant and is so fine that it’s able to stay airborne. Because of this, it would be recommended to wear a mask, especially if you’re sensitive.
In this first attempt of mine, I acquired 3 gallons of perlite that were divided into a gallon per bag. And I decided that the best way of soaking it would be to use my general purpose 5 gallon bucket. When I opened and dumped the first bag, it was clear how dusty this stuff actually is, and I took precaution on the 2nd and 3rd bags to reduce the dust cloud. After adding water to the bucket, the dust quickly subsided.
I then used my hands to to push down the perlite as it likes to float to the top of the container and began mixing it from there. Afterwards, I utilized a typical kitchen strainer to get rid of the excess water and then proceeded to add the hydrated perlite to my fruiting chamber.
Going forward, if I were to do this again, I’d actually completely skip the 5 gallon bucket mixture, and simply add water straight into the bag that the perlite arrived in. After shaking around water in the bag, I’d then poke a hole in the bottom of the bag to let the water drain out of the bag. This would greatly help with the amount of dust that’s stirred up, and also reduce the amount of things that we’d need to clean up afterwards.
~barkeep