Where are you? If you are in the frozen North and you are heating up dry polar air, the humidity levels may get too low. Perhaps fumes from the furnace are an issue?

Conditions next to where my little collection of Phalaenopsis are growing indoors are Temp 30C. Humidity 56%. Happiness for Phalaenopsis. Not so good for humans.

Pls post pictures of the actual plant, those flower spikes look old...

If it is happening to multiple phals, I'd guess it is an environmental issue.

Do these orchids get any drafts? As far as bud blast: They do not like to have air from heating/cooling vents blowing directly on them and they will definitely struggle if they are getting cold blasts from outside because of opening/closing doors. I 'believe' they sometimes blast because of big temp swings happening too quickly.

I'd be careful about misting unless they have air movement from a fan of some type.

Good luck,

Bob

I will post more pix as soon as I get full daylight in sunroom...

I am in zone 7a, and, yes, it probably has to do with the humidity level being too low. I used to have a fish tank in the sunroom and will bring it back, just for the sake of my plants! It does add a lot of humidity to the air.

Also, can orchids take 55F as a low temp, especially when trying to bloom? Occasionally, the temp in the sunroom drops at night to the 55-60F range.

thanks for all your thoughts!

Many orchids can take down to quite low temps, but some phals can be tempermental about that.

here are some more photos: hopefully you can see the shrivelled up buds and then the nice new ones coming in.

I increased the humidity (it was at 30% this morning): added a 50 gallon fish tank (fishless), and air bubbles and it is up to 40% now. No drafts in the sunroom, there are no vents, just the gas furnace, a really tall ceiling, and an overhead ceiling fan that I can turn on really low just to bring down the warm air, now and then.

my 50 gallon water tank is in the background, but if you look carefully at the buds, you can see at least two of them in this picture that are gone...they come out looking great, then shrivel up...

Here is a close up of one of the stems with a dead bud:

Here is another one with some good buds, and then the older buds are just dead.

btw, this morning, indoor temp read 65F and humidity 30%.

If the tank doesn't help, you may try moving the phal to another fairly bright location and see what happens.

Is the gas furnace specific to the sunroom? I'm beginning to think Arthur may have hit the nail on the head (gas fumes?) in his initial response. I also see a set of French doors that if used may cause some cold drafts, and depending on outside temps it may affect the buds???

FWIW: Over the years I've had certain phals that were very prone to bud blast, other phals that grew right beside them were fine but sometimes that one phal... I currently have one that blasted buds in the middle of the spike, flowers and buds below were fine and the buds above are progressing fine, but for about 4" in the middle of the spike it blasted several buds. Other phals within a couple feet of this one are budding and flowering just fine. I'll wait and see next year as I'm assuming it is something mechanical or chemical that I did to the spike. Space, effort, time and sanity are important to me so those that blast regularly usually find the compost pile after a couple of years:(

Sometimes "Blast Happens"

Good luck,

Bob

Thanks for your comments..."Blast Happens"...love that one.

Humidity is up to 50% this morning temp was 60F...once I turn furnace on things warm up nicely. If it's the fumes from the gas furnace ( we have a carbon monoxide detector next to the sunroom, so I sure hope it would detect high levels of that!!) not much I can do...it would get too cold in there, so I would have to relocate orchids to a warmer spot in the house, but the light would not be as good.

Once temps outside warm up, they do so great outside, blooming and so happy with the humidity and heat of our summers...hard to reproduce that inside:-(