Growing one organism. Stopping every other one.

jankeburger0
1 day ago
2 min read

Updated: 7 hours ago

PsyLabs cultivates psilocybin mushrooms in an environment where temperature, humidity, and airflow are carefully controlled every day. Those same conditions also create an ideal environment for bacteria, fungi, mould, and airborne spores.

Here's how one HVAC upgrade helped reduce contamination, and earned a repeat order years later.

In most growing environments, contamination is an occasional inconvenience. In a pharma-grade cultivation facility, it's disastrous.

Every day, PsyLabs creates the exact conditions psilocybin mushrooms need to grow: warmth, humidity, fresh air, controlled airflow. Those same conditions work just as well for bacteria, fungi, mould, and airborne spores.

Not all clean air is equal.

Most air systems are judged on particle counts, but that number alone doesn't tell you much.

Millions of harmless dust particles can pass through a grow room without touching the crop. One viable bacterium is enough to take out the whole room. Particle counts don't distinguish between the two.

That's why PsyLabs cares less about how clean the air looks on a report and more about whether anything in it is still alive.

Why filters aren't the answer

Humidity changes what you can do about contamination.

Cultivation rooms run at high moisture levels most of the day. Push filtration too far in that environment and airflow suffers, which matters just as much to a growing mushroom as clean air does.

PsyLabs needed a way to deal with airborne microorganisms that didn't involve replacing the HVAC system they already had.

A Different Approach

Instead of trying to catch every airborne microorganism with finer and finer filters, PsyLabs took a different approach by incorporating HiboScreen.

HiboScreen uses an electrostatic field inside the HVAC system to neutralise airborne bacteria, fungi, mould, and spores as they move through the air. That means contamination can be addressed without adding another filtration stage or redesigning the existing system.

For a facility where humidity and airflow are just as important as microbial control, that makes a big difference.

The Result Nobody Expected

The next microbial air test came back at 0 CFU for both bacteria and fungi, in a room built around exactly the conditions those organisms like best.

“Achieving 0 CFU in such challenging conditions is a game-changer.” — Neil, Mycologist at PsyLabs

The Real Test Came Years Later

Lab reports prove performance. What a customer does when the equipment wears out proves something else.

After years of continuous operation, PsyLabs' original HiboScreens reached the end of their service life. There was no new evaluation and no search for alternatives. They ordered replacement HiboScreens. Once contamination control is just part of how the facility runs, replacing the systems that kept working isn't a decision that takes much thought.