10000 square foot Grow!

mccumcumber said:

Well, I highly suggest breeding in a large scale grow up for a few reason. First, you have the room. Second, you become more familiar with what makes up a strain. Third, you always have the chance of coming across an extremely rare pheno that works amazing well under your growing conditions. Make that plant your new mom, and bam, you have a strain that grows best under your conditions and becomes extremely well known as great bud. Like GDP was for Humboldt or OG Kush LA area.

Solar pannels greatly reduce your electric mark on the grid. The feds will very easily notice a dude who is taking up a shit ton of energy from burning fuel. They will check out who the fuck it is taking up all of the energy. If you are not a company that is federally legal, well they will have some problems with that.
Also, I don't know how long he plans on running this for, but you get insane tax breaks after buying solar panels (to the point where you only actually pay for 13% of the panel) after the end of the year. Solar panels pay for themselves after the first year of use anyway, you got to think long term, not short term.

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First of all, the "growing conditions" are indoors. They are the same damn conditions we all have --If we have our shit dialed in--. It is nonsense to think you need to do MORE BREEDING to grow these plants indoors when they have ALREADY been bread for indoors.
Kush came from pakistan mountains and now I must consider that in designing my room? No. Should I locate the room at the same altitude that the genetics came from? no..

You don't understand solar energy very well. You cannot produce enough solar power to run those lights even if you use the roofs of all the neighboring buildings, too, for photovoltaic panels.

And then you talk about spooking the feds about your private power usage, but want to ask them for a million dollars worth of solar panels?? You want to ask the FEDS for the panels? You are noid about using power in Colorado, but just fine with applying to the federal government for solar panel tax breaks geared for small home owners that would total a MILLION DOLLARs.

I have a system to put together.. Are you a teenager by chance?

tommy

agreed with no breeding in the grow op. Male pollen in my commercial grow is a no freaking way. rocking about 30 moms so we are ok on propagation. Take that to the house or do what the nocal peeps do. Put a male and female in the woods together and let nature work it out.

Sorry I didn't realize that you don't get tax breaks on your solar panels... I actually wouldn't get them in that case.

Not trying to flame you, but where are you getting your numbers from? Do you have any solar experience? Do you have commercial grow experience?
50k for a solar system to power a 10k sqft grow op sounds off. That may be a number for a single family household that uses maybe 2kwh per day. Tax breaks? Well here in CO we don't get to deduct operating costs. rep Jared Polis is introducing a bill to the U.S. house that may change that, but right now, sorry. Solar breaks? IDK maybe, never looked into it since the photovoltaic cell is just a middle man between you and the sun. Could build a green house for the costs of a solar job and cut out the middleman, and the operating costs... but I digress.

http://sroeco.com/solar/most-efficient-solar-panels
that is the link to testing done on panels. The most efficient panels make 15w per sq ft. at a 40k watt grow you would need over 2.6k sqft of panels if I am doing the math right which reading the cost per watt is $4 per watt so $160,000. Thats a lot of money! If this was my business I would say solar is a dead horse. I'm in the biz to make money and offer great meds. Not waste 6 figures of capital on an electrical experiment. Figure the life span of them and maint costs... I'll pass. If i lived in a remote place, solar is great for a house. When I get 408v from the transformers on our property, I choose coal power.

My power bill... around 2000 a month for the lights

I have to agree, I had an idea to create a completely renewable energy grow house and it is really inefficient. This should be a viable option in ten years when oil runs out. we will be forced to use alternate energy sources. Or the government will find another product to overcharge us for.

And as for the different phenos, why waste time breeding when you can just use a couple of mothers and switch them out every few months. Easy fast and cheap solution. And you don't have the possibility of ruining your whole crop with seeds. Just my opinion.

Fixed post above.

After doing some multiplication, 230 1k HID at $.04 kw/hour (Is it lower for you in CO?) still runs you $40291 a year... finding out how not to pay all of that would be nice in my opinion.

Breeding just takes caution. It's a simple premise really. You wear clothes in the breeding room that you do not wear in your flower room, you completely separate the two. You have a separate exit from the breeding room as you do all other rooms, and you wash yourself up after being in the breeding room. It's worked very well for me.

I think maybe changing your reasoning a little bit makes more sense. If they have the extra money in a couple of harvests, maybe buy some solar panels just to help the environment. Maybe be able to say this green was grown green.

Well not only that, but in Cali my "green organic crop" sells for more than the same indoor grown without panels. I use an organic soil recipe that works great and I'm not hurting the enviroment. My grow is small, but I still get shit tons of new age hippies that will buy my product solely because it is environmentally friendly and organic. I'm not trying to screw over new age hippies, I usually try to give people fair prices, but a trustafarian (trust fund kid with dreads) is going to be paying up the asshole for my "green trees"

lollll Good point, You are making something they respect and something that is different. Go on with your bad self, raise the prices to pay for youe solar panels. lol Peace guys

good for you being able to set something up like this. if your really worried about your electric you can always run natural gas generators. but at only 4 cents a kwh phuck it. I'd use coco straight because you can reuse it a couple times and get your moneys worth out of the media. other than that use one room for moms one for veg 3 for production one for drying and such. dont forget about space to keep all your water, nutrients, media, trash etc. you got alot of space there im sure you will be able to figure it out. as for breeding why would you want to do that. then you have to worry about cross pollination planting seeds that might be a female but might not. seem like to much guess work. dont get me wrong breeding's great but why chance it. It could possibly ruin everything. Then im pretty sure your investors would not be happy. and to mccumcumber? rape who you will with your "green grass growing" prices cause at that point your not providing medicine your just another drug dealer. My leaves stay as green as yours and the medicine is still primo. stay green and scratch the mud. bong

I agree with not even chancing it with breeding.

So I work with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, CO and I am around a lot of people who work on solar (I personally work with fuel cells, not photovoltaics). In my professional opinion, with Xcel Energy no longer accepting applications for new solar rebates along with cutting down the excisting solar rebates, it would make little sense to have a solar grow. I think it would be cool if it were, but it is not economic, especially when starting an investment. However, if you wanted a "renewable" grow you would not be the first. Root Organic MMC in Boulder has their grow 100% powered by wind energy (although this is done by paying Xcel more money to invest in wind technologies).

Xcel wind link here

I agree with others in this WILL be your fulltime job, along with a few others for a grow this big. I personally don't have commercial grow experience so I can't answer a lot of the questions, but I think it would be a good idea to talk with other people with large medical grow ops so that you don't reinvent the wheel. It also depends a lot on how you want to market the product. A lot of places take pride in "organic" and soil grows, while others take pride in inexpensive bud (so yield being important). I will warn that Colorado is a very saturated market, but i'm sure the investors have considered this. I wish you luck and if if you need a helping hand let me know

K11ng said:

Ok well I'm sure the title has got your attention and i just had a few questions on the best way to fulfill a 10000 sq/ft facility?

Basically I'm gonna keep it short and simple and hope all of you knowledgeable ppl can give me some great ideas.

I have set up some investors to do a facility in Colorado and my job is to give them a blue print of the grow setup. I have ideas of where I'm gonna go with it and have a few mentors in as well , but i would love to hear some of your guys ideas.

I have 6 rooms of a total of 10000 sq/ft.
I have 230+ lights

obviously I'm looking to get maximum yield so with this in mind what would you consider the best scenario for this facility scenario?

questions for best possible way to run this size facility:
how many plants per light?
how big should the pots be?
should i use coco/perlite? soil?
best way to feed this big of a grow?
should i consider a custom hydro system? ( leaning towards this way )

I am just looking for your guys opinions on how you would do it if you had this space?
any info is highly appreciated.

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First a question. You said 230+ lights. What kind. Be more specific.
If I was you I would do a hydro setup but if you've never done one you'll need help.
The initial costs are large. But you get a nice uniform product.
Personally I like aero grows, because of the micron sized water particals around the root zone.
Or you could grow in soil which is cheaper and more forgiving. Theres lots to think about when you're spending other peoples money.

PS. Sorry for not reading through 4 pages of replies, I will though in a minute.

Huh? 230 lights burning non stop for a year? Your gonna need to show your math. try this: http://www.citytrf.net/costs_calculator.htm
20,000 watts x 24(hr) (2 rooms on 0-11:59 the other 2 on from 1200-23:59) x365 @ .09 kwh

As for breeding, breeding in your spot may work for you, but as a microbiologist by education, I know how hard it is to keep things sterile. Pollen is small, hard to stay 100% clean around, and could hurt my bottom line via seedy crop and reduced yields. How would you differentiate the pollen in a room of males from the other males? Seems like a bunch of undiscerning gametes all over the place if you ask me With the market price here in CO @ 30 an 8th retail (700-800qp wholesale) why risk anymore margins by having a couple of dudes with the ladies? Seeds are cheap in contrast to constructing sealed hepa level rooms for capturing loose pollen. Plus changing clothes every time I go into a room is not efficent. unless you have decon showers and full bubble suits you will not stay free of pollen. I have bushy ass jewfro hair... a real pollen trap! When the state comes through on inspection I can imagine the look on their face when I ask them to suit up like a space man to inspect my plants. Gentics are worked on for a very long time to get the right phenos. I took gentics in college believe me, Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics did it the way most growers here would do it. Breeding, back breeding, and selective breeding to isolate phenotypes. To develop a real championship strain takes time. Most dispensaries here deal in the same or similar strains from seeds bought online or in some of our cases, a NoCal proven seed lineage. Patients want a brand like durban, kush varieties, diesel etc. with 800 dispensaries here in CO why not just stick with proven genes, attentive growing through experience, good service, legal compliance, and great prices. Our top shelf goes for $200 OZ retail. I want my buisness to be lean and not waste money or space on an experiment.
It seems you are real into the idea of breeding. Thats cool, but as a person who has watched dispensaries try to be all kinds of things fail all around us, I will stick to the plan of, cleanliness, attention to detail and simplicity... Perhaps we will just agree to disagree.

COmmjGUY said:

Huh? 230 lights burning non stop for a year? Your gonna need to show your math. try this: http://www.citytrf.net/costs_calculator.htm
20,000 watts x 24(hr) (2 rooms on 0-11:59 the other 2 on from 1200-23:59) x365 @ .09 kwh

As for breeding, breeding in your spot may work for you, but as a microbiologist by education, I know how hard it is to keep things sterile. Pollen is small, hard to stay 100% clean around, and could hurt my bottom line via seedy crop and reduced yields. How would you differentiate the pollen in a room of males from the other males? Seems like a bunch of undiscerning gametes all ...

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Bravo! You rock. Very well-reasoned arguments. I didn't mean to flame the guy, either.. I like the ideas of solar, green, breeding, etc, but not in a production environment...

tommy

i think the fact that people with single-4 light grows giving advice to a 230 light grow is ridiculous.

i think someone planning to do a 230 light grow asking questions is ridiculous.

sorry, but if you are going to be the brains of the op on a grow that scale, you really should have a pretty solid idea what you are doing and no need advice.

maybe try a 20-50 light grow first or hire a consultant.

I think this whole thread is ridiculous. I mean, there is some solid advice and what not but some dude just showing up "hey man, I got 230 1,000 watt bulbs and a huge warehouse to grow in...what do I do?

"investors" LMFAO. Yeah, most grow op investors often tap kids that don't know anything about large scale grows...

I think when he says investors what he really means is "my parents".

I appreciate all the great info and ideas from everyone, exactly what I was looking for!
As far as the smart ass comments from the haters keep them coming, I wasn't looking for those type of comments but it does make me happy to hear that even you type of people care.

Yes understandable to say why would someone who is going to do a 10000sq/ft grow as questions on a forum? Well same reason everyone else asks questions on here. To get the publics advice and personal opinions.


I'm not here saying tomorrow I'm doing this grow and need help, I'm simply gathering ideas from as many people willing to give them ,and that knowledge can be used or not used.

If this is to much to comprehend for some let me put it this way, think of this as an enormous think tank, the more brains, ideas, info, comments, opinions, advice, etc, the more options I have down the road to use or not to use, very simple.

That being said PLEASE KEEP THE INFO COMING, believe what you want about this thread being truthful or not, I know that the people out there that like to discuss matters like this are satisfied with just the good conversation.

Investors means investors, 10000sq/ft means 10000sq/ft, just like idiot means idiot.

I would love to personally comment on all your post and comment on each idea but it would be very time consuming and as you can see by the thread I don't really have the spare time, but if you feel the need to discuss your ideas further personally you are free to pm me and i will respond
thanks to everyone and please keep the ideas coming

run leds in all veg rooms 600watt on 220v they pull 2amps run hps in flower room on 220v if you go hydo you change lights use soil get a cemet mixer at home depoe mix all soil your self with sand 5 gal pots for flowering any help let me know iam running 30x30 veg room 25x30 flower room i sell leds and grow with them

Sorry, but for this size HID is the only efficient way to go. Unless LED drop to $200 for a 1000w I would not even think of it. My opinion obviously lol.

And why bash him? He has this opportunity to do this and at least he is doing the right thing by doing his homework. I have your back all the way K11ng!