In this episode of the Cannabis Equipment News Podcast, Brandy Keen, co-founder and senior technical advisor of Surna Cultivation Technologies, discusses her nearly 17 years of industry experience helping some 800 cultivators.
Managing operating costs while maximizing yields is the only way to survive the inevitable decline in revenue associated with changing market conditions. Watch the webinar recording now.
Despite the rapid growth of the cannabis and vertical farming industries, half of indoor farms do not reach profitability. There is much to learn from failing operations, and by analyzing pillar areas of failure, we can extrapolate where they went wrong and how to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
When faced with challenges of contamination and odor control, some indoor growers have adopted pressurized ventilation methods, manipulating positive and negative pressure to protect their grow spaces. Let’s dive into grow room air pressure and ventilation and what may work for you.
The flower room is where the female cannabis plant begins to develop bud sites and begin flowering. This stage of the cannabis growth cycle requires slightly different growing conditions than that of veg, and it is important that you take these needs into consideration when designing your indoor grow spaces.
The Veg Room is where baby plants from the nursery become teen plants. They are grown to maturity before being moved into the flower room. The majority of the cannabis plant’s leafy growth and elongation will occur in veg. However, stretching will continue for 2-3 weeks into a 12/12 photoperiod (flower) where they’ll grow another 30% in size before shifting energy to flower mass production. That kind of growth is what makes designing your veg rooms properly so vital to your operation.
Anyone who has ever built a cultivation facility can confirm that it’s a long and stressful process. And for those who haven’t? Hear us now: It’s a long and stressful process and it’s important to have realistic expectations about timelines during the pre-planning stages.
Apart from our deep expertise and value in engineering design, where we can provide equal value to our clients is in the design-build HVAC model. The complexity of systems in cannabis facilities usually necessitates a well-coordinated effort, with an experienced, well-qualified central party taking responsibility for the mechanical system from concept to design to equipment and integration.
Understanding how different technologies are best applied in various circumstances is what led us to pursue all different types of technologies that we can offer to our clients. Our line of custom air handlers, which can be applied in either chilled water or DX (refrigerant based) applications, resulted from those efforts.
When given the opportunity to work with some of our design and construction peers to put together a design/build resource for the industry, we jumped at it. The result was “Build Your Grow,” which you can read here. However, we thought it would also be helpful to do a quick recap of the top takeaways for a quick read.