Yo DGC what’s happening? Hopefully everyone is getting ready for planting season and all the DGC a good, clean harvest this year!
So I am lucky enough to have gotten my commercial grow license in Oklahoma. We have some land out of town limits that we are putting up a 14×36 barn style portable building. If looking from the front, the door is on the far left of the 32 foot length. We then have 2 windows exactly even distance apart from one another, as high up on the wall as they can go, like 6 feet up on the wall. All placement was done to maximize the inside grow area without interference. Barn style buildings are very tall, with the walls being 7 foot 7 inches high, with a maximum ceiling height of 13 and a half foot high in the direct middle.
So here’s the dream space to start a small grow op. I’ll be using DE lights simply for cost. How would you set up this space? I was thinking of running 4×8 tables along all the sides like a U shape. I could easily fit 8 of the 4×8 tables along the edges and still have a small work area. With 2 lights a table, that’s 16 lights total. We are using 28k btu window units to cool everything and take away the humidity. Should only need like a quest 125 with those strong window units evaporating it up. I’ll be placing clones, vegging for a month and then flipping to flower. What do think? We can’t afford LEDs or I would go that route. Any advice or suggestions?
54watt t-5 lamps work well for clones and you can get a 6 lamp fixture for around 200 bucks , it’s been used for years successfully
HPS are amazing at flowering and that’s about it
Cmh can do both and get down deep with 30000 hour lamps
LED can be energy efficient vs the uMOLS output but do not have much heat
Around 200 bucks per fixture with lamps for t5
Around 350 bucks per fixture C/W veg and flowering lamps for CMH
Around 350-1200 bucks per LED fixture but they can last up to 50,000 hours
Around 200 bucks for a HPS light and lamp combo
Mercury Vapor is almost non existent and has a off Color phasing to them , not sure about cost or anything any longer
If you used all of these lights in separate tents it would be an amazing experiment and either LED or CMH would come out on top , it’s not that HPS does not grow amazing bud , it’s that the veg state is so important to get right as well and ensures that the plant gets off on the right foot . Kinda like a bodybuilder with no legs , massive upper body but no support underneath it where the other ones have that nice even CRI already available . It’s very much debatable and you would have to just put down the facts while leaving your biased opinions aside and that’s hard to do . But in your case if you have already purchased the double ended lights I would still supplement with CMH veg lights and the t-5 for clones . I’m not sure how a t5 would do for veg plant going four weeks . I use them for clones and regular vegetables.
I guess I should say the “clones” are actually a foot and a half tall lol….Oklahoma nursery clones lol
That’s a good sized clone going already there at that height ! How long do you veg them before the flip? That’s awesome you have a commercial license in Oklahoma , I hope you knock it out of the park !
With limited height you may want to consider having to pots as low to the ground as possible.
125 pints per day wont do it. The ACs will be more efficient if your dehumidifiers are doing the dehumidification.
Calculate the pints per day you’re giving the plants and that’s the size dehumidifier you need.
I misread about ceiling height.
Actually I found a 234 ppd stand up unit for 650. That should work just perfectly
man these big AC units STRIP the humidity in these small buildings. I helped another local guy out and he had the same size building and everything. Was running 7 tables and 14 de’s. He only had a 24,500 btu window unit and a 18,500 window unit. 105 outside and it was 73 inside. he used 3 of the 60 ppd units and COULD get by with 2 if he emptied buckets half way during the day
My advice for any commercial grower in OK would be….
Take whatever steps you can to minimize your costs and keep your production expenses as low as you can!
Bud prices are likely headed for a big crash in Oklahoma, (if it hasn’t started already). Make sure your business will still be viable when the price per pound takes a big dive.
It’s easy to make money at $3-4k per lb, but the numbers get a lot rougher when the price starts to tank in a flooded market. Growers in other states are seeing $500 or less per lb and that’s the direction Oklahoma is headed too.
Make sure you plan your business so you can either survive or cash out when the prices start to bottom out.
My advice is to have as much buffer between the plants and the walls. Condensation is why. Fans fans fans . I like to blast my fans directly up my walls in fall. Do you have to have tables? You are going to find the 7 ft starting point easy to out grow. Do a lot to train them so they stay lower and visible. I personally have big rings I made out of fencing so I could have each plant trellised independently. The rings also give a foot print of space to keep to. Good luck!
yeah after I started thinking about it, I am going to put all the plants in the middle of the room all 8 of the 4×8 tables. 4 side by side of the other 4. Should make the overlap of the lights better too. I was just thinking access to everything but I should be able to get cheap roller benches…