Hey, a group of us is working on putting together a large scale grow operation. We have secured a space that is 7,000 sqft with 27 ft ceilings. We grow in all dirt and want to keep it that way as we're old fashioned hippies. We are just getting started on the designing of this and wondered if anyone else had experience in such a large space. Here are some of our questions:
- Trying to decide on moving the lights up and down vs moving the plants. What methods would work best?
- How many rooms should we build out to start? We currently have 14 different strains growing. What sizes make the most sense for cloning etc.
- How worried should we be about ventilation? The space is huge with 27 ft ceilings - surely there wouldn't be a needs so early on.
Any other advice or suggestions you might have for such a large space would be greatly appreciated. And don't worry this is a legal grow - no worries about smell and we have a bad ass 3 phase power.
Thanks,
sj
wow a legal warehouse grow.
you have my dream job.
it would be easier to raise lower the lights... think of stage lights, the idea is to build a sturdy, well balanced metal frame that is suspended on steel cable attatched to a racheting winch for raising or lowering. it would be simplest to have all the flowering rooms on the same 12/12 lighting shchedule because then you would only need one contactor and timeclock to run the entire show, granted it would be a big (200 amp) contactor at minimum.... or you could use highbay lights, and hang them from individual cables. theis is probably the cheapest option
as far as how many rooms, that is really limited to your floor space and available lighting. ideally you would have 14 flowering rooms with HPS or CMH lamps (one for each strain) and maybe one large room for the moms/cloning/veg. though if you dont run sog style grows then im not sure how many veg rooms you would need, as it would depend on a variety of factors such as how big do you want them to get; and perhaps a smaller sealed room or two for breeding if you wanted to go that far. as far as partitioning off the rooms, it can be as simple as cloth curtains over a simple pipe frame, or you could go balls out and build plywood walls. personally i would want something flexible though, because with that kind of space i would be wanting to max production on my better strains and have space left over to run experimental grows, and be able to create space or take it away as needed.
with 27 foot ceilings, your local climate will either be your best friend or worst enemy, or maybe both. in the winter, obviously, temps are a minor concern, but in the summer, they get to be a pain in the ass. the bonus of having such high ceilings is that since heat rises, all of the heat is going to go up the 20 or so feet above the canopy to the ceiling and spread out throughout the building. depending on the building structure, (steel bar joists are best) and ambient temps, sometimes this natural convection is enough to coll the air down to acceptable temps and fall back down to the floor. however if the heat cannot dissipate in the ceiling fast enough, it will turn into an oven, with temps differences by as much as 60-70 degrees between the floor and the ceiling. thats when you want to consider ceiling vents or exhaust fans. i would think that with such high ceilings the only air movement you really need could be provided at floor level by occiliating fans, unless you wanted to blow some cash and get a few air handling units and run some ducts down to the individual rooms. its all about what you want to pay.
the biggest bitch about what your doing with working with so many different strains is the different requirements each strain needs to thrive, and that is what will ultimately cost you money in the long run in lighting and enviromental controls and more partitions as each different micro climate needs to be reproduced for whatever strains you have. i already suggested running the whole group of flowering rooms on the same 12/12 schedule because if you need individual lighting requirements and enviromental requirements for each strain, your going to end up spending thousands on controls alone. and i dont even want to think about trying to get co2 systems on a scale that large thats alot of gas, alot of valves, alot of timers and the like. very high initial overhead cost.
