Setup for ultra highland Nepenthes

[Fenrakk95]

Hello, I would like to know how to achieve proper drops in temperature for ultra-highland Nepenthes. I currently own intermediate and lowland species/hybrids, but I haven't bought any highland yet, given that my weather doesn't have proper temperature drops and tends to be too hot for them.
I have seen that many people use temporary solutions such as modified wine coolers/fridges, peltier cells, aquarium chillers, etc, but these are only useful as long as the plants are small enough to fit in these places and given that these could reach huge sizes such as rajah (even if it is after several years), there must be better ways of achieving this for long therm cultivation.
I currently don't own ultra-highlands or highlands, but I am still curious about this. Ideally, it would be useful to have an air conditioner; however, these tend to reduce humidity considerably, so maybe it should be used alongside a humidifier? I am not sure of how efficient this would be. I also thought about swamp/evaporative coolers; however, these don't tend to work well if the humidity is already high.
I am still going to wait a little longer before getting into highland Nepenthes, so for the time being, I would like to learn, which setups do you usually use for these kinds of plants? Especially for places with high humidity with pretty high temperatures.
And yes, I am aware that villosa, rajah, macrophylla, etc, are not good options to start to cultivate highland species, and I don't intend to do so, I am just interested in knowing how others usually do it, even more if their conditions are similar to what I mentioned.

 

[hcarlton]

If you're going to try and make up a setup for plants when they're full-sized, you're going to need either an evaporative swamp cooler attached to a dry-air external opening to make it function, or an air conditioner that feeds the air into a humidifier and with an exhaust that transfers the heat well away from the space. Large space means large system to do the cooling.
I take care of about half the heat problem by having a big grow space in a cool basement corner, but it still requires a cooler with nightly ice pack additions to drop it to tolerable, and only just so in summer. Any other setup is going to need more technical and efficient.

 

[dre]

Hello, I would like to know how to achieve proper drops in temperature for ultra-highland Nepenthes. I currently own intermediate and lowland species/hybrids, but I haven't bought any highland yet, given that my weather doesn't have proper temperature drops and tends to be too hot for them.
I have seen that many people use temporary solutions such as modified wine coolers/fridges, peltier cells, aquarium chillers, etc, but these are only useful as long as the plants are small enough to fit in these places and given that these could reach huge sizes such as rajah (even if it is after several years), there must be better ways of achieving this for long therm cultivation.
I currently don't own ultra-highlands or highlands, but I am still curious about this. Ideally, it would be useful to have an air conditioner; however, these tend to reduce humidity considerably, so maybe it should be used alongside a humidifier? I am not sure of how efficient this would be. I also thought about swamp/evaporative coolers; however, these don't tend to work well if the humidity is already high.
I am still going to wait a little longer before getting into highland Nepenthes, so for the time being, I would like to learn, which setups do you usually use for these kinds of plants? Especially for places with high humidity with pretty high temperatures.
And yes, I am aware that villosa, rajah, macrophylla, etc, are not good options to start to cultivate highland species, and I don't intend to do so, I am just interested in knowing how others usually do it, even more if their conditions are similar to what I mentioned.

Hello! And welcome to the awesome side of highland Nepenthes!

To start off I'd just like to say that Ultra highlanders do just fine in highland conditions(75-78f days and 54-57f nights)mainly thanks to the fact that we now have so many clones of villosa, rajah, macrophylla,etc that will do perfectly fine with the conditions mentioned above. I also had the same worry about the plants getting large so I decided to go all in with a 8x4x6'5 growtent that I had modified specifically for highland nepenthes.

To get the proper temps, I used the Toshiba AC 8k BTU portable unit with a small light bulb taped and aluminum foiled to the temperature probe of the unit(this is to trick the unit into thinking that the temperature is warmer than it actually is and make it's run a lil longer and colder). I have it connected to a inkbird temperature controller Wi-Fi model as it lets me set a specific day and nighttime temp inside the tent and also prevents the AC unit coils from freezing up. I keep the AC unit sitting outside of the tent and use a aluminum air duct taped on one end of it to the output of the unit and the other end into the tent(I also wrapped said duct with insulation so that the cold air doesn't bleed out of it while on its way to my tent), I also keep a bucket under the unit to catch condensation.

Another great point you brought up was the amount of cold dry air they push out which would be a problem with humidity. What I did was keep a tote of water inside the tent with two 10 head ultrasonic mistmakers from vevor(also controlled by and inkbird humidistat) and they have been able to keep my humidity to 85-92% even with the Unit on at night( two 10 heads is overkill and just one would probably be enough but I use two cuz I love the thick smoke it makes and reminds me of a cloud forest lol)

Growtents have very little to no insulation whatsoever so warm air will bleed in. All I did was cover the sides, back, and ceiling with a foam board. It's not perfect but I've seen that my unit doesn't turn on as much during the night because of it.

Hope I could be of help and if you have any other questions just lmk!