Designing a 15000sqft facility....please help

Reservoirs get water topped off via solenoid controlled float valve again underground fed from pressurized ro feed.

Nutes and ph down can be brought in the same way through in ground dosing pump feeds.

so you put aisles in between your 4x8's? i'd want them scooted together for maximum lighting efficiency...but this would make it a bigger pita for maintenance

for me lighting efficiency and cross lighting comes first...

for a 500kw grow.. ease of maintenance would probably take precedence.

you've given me some things to think about snaps....thank you

dosing pumps...kinda forgot about those. Do they adjust automatically for ph fluctuations??? I suppose so eh?

joe macclennan said:

so you put aisles in between your 4x8's? i'd want them scooted together for maximum lighting efficiency...but this would make it a bigger pita for maintenance

for me lighting efficiency and cross lighting comes first...

for a 500kw grow.. ease of maintenance would probably take precedence.

you've given me some things to think about snaps....thank you

Click to expand...

Having aisles allows you to push trays off to the side and access reservoir underneath for cleaning between cycles.

i can see that. i'd still like to have a water room I think.

the whole dosing pump idea though......hmmmm this kinda changes that...and makes it more automated....LIKE THIS!

do they need calibrated and maintenanced often?

i had a 3 in 1 continuous monitor and wasn't happy with it. It was a cheapo though....

The water room is ro filtration and storage with feeds to points of use.

Tanks are harder to clean between cycles than low profile reservoirs that can be mopped and hosed down their drain.

Dosing pumps need to be sized right and don't use cheap controllers. Good to integrate a overrun limit sensor as probes fail and cause pump to run wild, a second limit sensor to cutoff pump and setoff alarm is best imho.

Calibration once weekly is advised for pH and bimonthly for ec.

SnapsProvolone said:

The water room is ro filtration and storage with feeds to points of use.

Tanks are harder to clean between cycles than low profile reservoirs that can be mopped and hosed down their drain.

Click to expand...

not a fan of in room low pro res... they get too warm imo.

thanks for the tips snaps.

i've got a lot MORE to think about.

Water temps aren't a big deal since flood n drain systems are getting air most of the time. Ivd never had root rott in flood n drain.

I'll take your lack of a response to my question as an explicit "No, I have never grown marijuana before in my life, but I plan on successfully running a million-dollar marijuana growing operation."

I have not grown cannabis before m3d, and i'm not planning to be in charge of the growing either. I think ive been pretty clear on that point.

I've been blessed with the ability to secure the needed capital from some close associates and I have a lot of managerial experience. Most large scale grows are run by a board made up of a group of individuals. Part of that team includes growers. Other roles are legal, lab, admin, sales, accounting, compliance. ...our team will have an experienced master grower to over see the grow aspect as well as other growers. As well many support staff to help him like bud trimmers and tenders. I'm hoping to also learn what I can through our grower.

Are you prepared for the costs of cooling this large of a grow?

500kW of light means a lot of heat. 100 tons was mentioned earlier. And I would like to mention why that is way off.

500kW of light means somewhere in the neighborhood of 500kW of heat. Add the heat from ballasts and you are looking at nearly 600kW of heat. Best to be on the safe side and assume 200W of heat to the ballast. I've seen some that put out 175W of heat, and some as low as 100W. This is a ballast efficiency thing. They range from 94% on the high side down to 80% of the low side. But, good luck getting good data sheets on most of these ballasts to tell you what it really is. Anyway, 600kW of heat.
1w = 3.412 btu/hr.
600kW of heat = 2,047,200BTU/h.
12,000BTU/hr = 1 ton of cooling.
2,047,200BTU/h = 170.6 tons.
Add the heat of the summer to that as well as the rest of the building. +20 tons maybe. Depends on the insulating characteristics of the building. +10 tons at a minimum.
Add redundancy to that. Do you really want your cooling system to suddenly be way undersized in the event of a failure? 88F and 90% relative humidity is a very bad thing for the plants. 77F and 40% RH is a reasonable temperature to run. We are talking about a very valuable crop here. Redundancy in very important. +25% at a minimum.

As high as 225 tons of cooling.

Most general contractors you talk to will say ~$2500/ton installed. $575K is a possibility.

I would assume all ballast be remotely operated mr. One post

and he is in canada...not the tropics..You know this right?

It's still in the facility is it not? So it still makes heat.

I may not have many posts but I work as a mechanical engineer in HVAC. I've done a few larger facilities(not 500kW, but still significant), and this seems to be overlooked a little bit. Sticker shock hits a lot of people on just the cooling systems.

I don't know about this many ballast but I think I would just actively exhaust my mechanical area.

roof fans will move a lot of air and heat

MisterBlah said:

I may not have many posts but I work as a mechanical engineer in HVAC. I've done a few larger facilities(not 500kW, but still significant), and this seems to be overlooked a little bit. Sticker shock hits a lot of people on just the cooling systems.

Click to expand...

Fair enough. welcome then.

His plans don't even have a mechanical room.

I guess I just assumed there would be.

I would have one for all relays timers ballast and anything else.

he did say that diagram wasn't accurate.