Kickass new job!

Greetings fellow growers.

About two weeks ago, I got a call from a friend whom I hadn't heard from in awhile. In the past, he'd call to ask for curing advice, little things like that. This call was to be different though. This call had the potential to change my life. He tells me that he's finishing up the legal work for a I502 business. He's got a real-estate buddy who is to be the investor, and that he would like me to be the grower for this operation. Holy shit, YES! I was prepared to be painting houses all summer, and had dumped a bunch on money into my business. Oh well, I guess I can always fall back on painting if this doesn't work out. I don't know if you've ever got a phone call like this, but whoa! Took a few days for the gravity of it to settle in. Anyway, I have a meeting with them in a week or so to go over startup costs. I wanted to run my ideas by the RIU community, because I'm in the deep end of the pool here. I've never done anything near this big. So, here's the rundown.

We've got 2,500-3,000 SF to work in. A building will either be built on my friends 40 acre property, or one will be rented. We'll probably discuss that in the meeting. In 502, there is no limit to number of plants grown, within the allotted SF. I believe we will start out using only a portion of total capacity, as it would cost over 100k to completely outfit a building of that size. I'm going to suggest we start out at 1/4 capacity or so. Here's where I'm at so far.

20k watts of flower room, perhaps divided into two 10k rooms.
Perpetual SOG. Here's where I'm probably gonna get some shit. I want 4 plants per SF, 64 plants per 4' x 4' table, under 1 - 1000w Gavitia DE. The 64 - 6" x 6" pots will be coco DTW, and the rooted clones will go directly into flower. I'd like each 4 x 4 table on wheels, for easy maneuverability. I'd like to harvest 2 tables per room every 2 weeks, moving in fresh rooted clones in to replace them. I know that's a shit ton of clones, but I think I can manage 256 every 2 weeks from 4 or so mothers. I don't really see people doing such a condensed SOG, though I've heard it mentioned. I may find myself having to reduce that number down the road, but I'll just have to see. If I can keep this thing running, I should conservatively crop over 100 lbs per year (1 GPW), and that's at 1/4 or so capacity. I think I can do better than 1 gpw, likely not right away though.

So that's the plan. I could completely change my mind about everything tomorrow, who knows. Now lets talk equip. I mentioned the Gavitia's already. At 600 a pop, I'm aware there are much cheaper ways to go about it, but from what I can tell, these things are the best. I'll list out some of the other stuff I'm looking at.

Gavitia: http://www.fullbloomhydroponics.net/gavita-pro-1000w-double-ended-reflector-complete-fixture/
Dehume: http://www.fullbloomhydroponics.net/commercial-180-pint-dehumidifier/ Probably want 2 of these.
Light controller: http://www.titancontrols.net/products/lighting/helios-14.aspx Either this, or 2 12's...
HVAC: Have yet to figure this one out. Perhaps a couple mini's, or something for the entire space.
Air Circ: Got this figured to about $2,500 of exchange/circ fans and carbon filters.
Trays/pots: Again, $2,500 or so. 24 - 4' x 4's + 1,500 - 6" x 6"
Cloners : http://turboklone.com/product_t144.php Two of these.
Mother/cloning area: $1,000-1,500 in lights & such.

This covers most of the hardware. I've got more things, but I won't get into all that. This brings me to medium & nutrients. I mentioned that I was going to be using coco. Still haven't sourced out a wholesale dealer yet, but I think I'll be needing 1k Cu Ft (expanded) per year. I'm not planning on mixing with perlite, but that could change tomorrow, lol.

Now onto nutes. I am really having a hard time calculating how much I'm going to require. I'm interested in trying New Millennium out of CO, and perhaps they could give me an idea. I don't think I need to run a full line, as I'm planning for zero veg time. Not sure about that though.

I mentioned the deep end of the pool. My growing experience amounts to 5 or so years in a 4' x 6' room I built in my barn. I built every system (mostly high pressure aero) from scratch, and would basically teardown & rebuild after each run. Usually something totally different. I've built a couple hydro systems for growing veggies in my greenhouse as well.

I've never grown in coco! I'm choosing this method because it's what everyone else is doing. Perhaps not 4 plants per SF, but coco nonetheless. Eventually I'd like to convert everything to aeroponics, as it is my favorite shit. I would like to get away from all that medium. I don't want to take chances until I've established myself & my garden. So, I'm welcome to advice, either genuine or in the form of criticism. I'm well aware that I'm probably not the most qualified to be taking on a project of this size, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna give it hell!

well looks good but for my (meager) advice services we'd have to agree that I get unfettered access to your shake from each harvest

Neat. Take a pic when it's all set up.

joespit said:

well looks good but for my (meager) advice services we'd have to agree that I get unfettered access to your shake from each harvest

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I'm assuming you're local? I know the guy who owns Refine Seattle. He tells me that he has all the trim he can handle, so I might have to figure something else out.

Nice, are you north or south? Ive been to a few 502 grows and theyre pretty sweet. Id reccomend renting a space. Vuilding one is a ton of extra money and nobodys really sure what direction the trade is going twards. Plus getting building permits and construction will probably put production back a year. Check out legalyflyings grow. I know you dont want to go dwc but youll get an idea of what your looking at for your rooms. Make sure you have many smaller rooms not large spaces so you can keep things seperate and just in case theres a problem it can be contained instead of spreading. And for your ac, forget about mini splits. Get tin bashers in and run full size units. Warehouses should already have the right power to run your op if. Have fun and try and sleep. Also make sure your watering system is streamlined, or youll be paying a lot of money for watering. The one i was at has around the clock waterers working because they fd up the design and by the time they were done watering the plants were dry again. That was costing them soo much. Good luck and if you head south hit me up, i know some people who could help you come up with a design. Theyve worked with a lot of 502 guys and could really steer you in the right direction.

Mike Young said:

I'm assuming you're local? I know the guy who owns Refine Seattle. He tells me that he has all the trim he can handle, so I might have to figure something else out.

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Seems like a perfect thing for a man with a van... I am on the more illegal coast nor do I've a van, but too much weed is sure a great problem!

Alienwidow said:

Nice, are you north or south? Ive been to a few 502 grows and theyre pretty sweet. Id reccomend renting a space. Vuilding one is a ton of extra money and nobodys really sure what direction the trade is going twards. Plus getting building permits and construction will probably put production back a year. Check out legalyflyings grow. I know you dont want to go dwc but youll get an idea of what your looking at for your rooms. Make sure you have many smaller rooms not large spaces so you can keep things seperate and just in case theres a problem it can be contained instead of spreading. And for your ac, forget about mini splits. Get tin bashers in and run full size units. Warehouses should already have the right power to run your op if. Have fun and try and sleep. Also make sure your watering system is streamlined, or youll be paying a lot of money for watering. The one i was at has around the clock waterers working because they fd up the design and by the time they were done watering the plants were dry again. That was costing them soo much. Good luck and if you head south hit me up, i know some people who could help you come up with a design. Theyve worked with a lot of 502 guys and could really steer you in the right direction.

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Funny you should mention sleep, I haven't been doing as much of it. By the evening when my wife gets home, she says I've been like a zombie, lol. Perhaps it's because I'm an aero guy, but hand watering is not an idea that sits well with me. I would like nothing more than to automate that process. Getting an equal amount of water to each site is challenging,and I don't like the idea of drip emitters for my situation. Something I'll be working on for sure. I dig everything your saying about renting, AC & sectioning off. All things I've been thinking about. Can you tell me if any of the grows you've seen were SOG? I visited a 250 light med grow, and they were just growing trees. It was a beautiful sight, but I thing SOG is more effective.

Oh, op will be north. I currently live somewhere in the middle.

joespit said:

Seems like a perfect thing for a man with a van... I am on the more illegal coast nor do I've a van, but too much weed is sure a great problem!

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Ha! I just bought an 05' Astro van... For house painting, but I hope to be done chuckin' ladders. Unless it's a ladder in the growroom.

Legallyflying has his profile on lockdown. I just read the "Light the fuse & run" thread. It seems to drop off in Feb. Any Does he have another thread started?

Mike Young said:

Legallyflying has his profile on lockdown. I just read the "Light the fuse & run" thread. It seems to drop off in Feb. Any Does he have another thread started?

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Ya theres one more after that i think. I dont know how much hes been around lately. But no, they were going with regular sized 2-3 oz plants, just lots of them. Youll need a serious mother room to keep those other rooms going lol. What do tou pull for clones off of a plant? Like 24? Sounds like a plant a table but i dont know sog.

I think sog would be more effective but i also have a feeling that if you try to do that with such a large grow that youd have to be so on the ball at every stage of the process that youd run into issues eventually with timing. With larger plants you have larger windows of time to complete tasks and less problems if you end up a week behind, or a month lol

Ebb n grow buckets, 9 plants per light. Huge res. Done and done. Doing a huge plant sog would be insane, what if a mom plant dies, then what? Also, taking that many cuts from a mother plant every other week might stunt it? Maybe not but I don't think sog would be ideal for a large grow. I can tell you I did 36 plant per light sogs running only 8 lights and it is a pain in the ass. If a mother plant fails or a batch of clones fail, everything gets screwed up in the rotation. Good luck man! Awesome news none the less!

I owned & operated 8 4ft x 8ft tables running single cola sog for about 5 yrs , I did simple.Flood & drain with 50 plants per table with one table coming down every week , was doing roughly 6.5 lbs per table per week .

The 400 plant grow , chopping n trimming 6 lbs a week , cutting 60 clones per week , cleaning a table every week , changing 8 50 gallon rez every week etc wore my ass down , I had to hire trimmers in order to get the table down & restocked the same day .

Dude if you ever want to see daylight again you best scale down , 400 plants put 10 yrs on me & took most my time & I haven't even mentioned room maintenance like reflector cleaning , bulb changes & pump maintenance.

I would never run a grow that large again but I will give you a tip , do not show anybody how to run your grow op cause as soon as you do they will have 2 other grows going off your set up & methods , been there & done it .

Being a grower for somebody else blows , unless they are talking $10k a month your percentage is too low .

panhead said:

I owned & operated 8 4ft x 8ft tables running single cola sog for about 5 yrs , I did simple.Flood & drain with 50 plants per table with one table coming down every week , was doing roughly 6.5 lbs per table per week .

The 400 plant grow , chopping n trimming 6 lbs a week , cutting 60 clones per week , cleaning a table every week , changing 8 50 gallon rez every week etc wore my ass down , I had to hire trimmers in order to get the table down & restocked the same day .

Dude if you ever want to see daylight again you best scale down , 400 plants put 10 yrs on me & took most my time & I haven't even mentioned room maintenance like reflector cleaning , bulb changes & pump maintenance.

I would never run a grow that large again but I will give you a tip , do not show anybody how to run your grow op cause as soon as you do they will have 2 other grows going off your set up & methods , been there & done it .

Being a grower for somebody else blows , unless they are talking $10k a month your percentage is too low .

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Id do it for five k a month. I love growing and id love an opportunity like this guy has. If theres no risk involved its just like any other job but with a little more expertise involved. Five k a month, 60 k a year? No risk? Sign me up.

Sounds good to me unless you want to eventually change your career and weed is still frowned upon.

Id do everything your saying minus the perputaul harvest. Just have 3 rooms 3 weeks apart. Trust me, you do not want to harvest every week. Having that many Rez on different weeks, uneven plant canopy in rooms, different needs for different weeks of flowering as far as environment goes. Perputaul in the same room is a giant pain in the ass.

Also, 250 clones every two weeks is not an easy task. You'll need a full 3x3 of perfect vegetation. Then 100% usable clones. Also u mention getting 20 trays for flowering and harvesting 2 every 2 weeks, you wouldn't be able to do this and run 20 trays. You'd either have to do 4 trays every 2 weeks or 2 trays a week. 10 week flower. Even with 8 weeks. math doesn't work out man.

My advice to you, write everything little thing you can think of in extreme detail on this site. People will b able to call u out on what your gonna do wrong, an tell u what your doing right.

I honestly think a sog would be very difficult at that level, as mentioned above. If you're looking at no veg time, you can just have a veg room. Pre veg everything.
On a small scale. 9 plants per light (or 12, whatever you want to do). 3 lights. Monthly perpetual.

Preveg 9 clones for 3 weeks in veg room. Move to flower. Have 9 rooted cuts ready for veg that take the place of the 9 you just put into flower. After 3 weeks put them in flower. Move 9 more clones into veg. 3 weeks later move them to flower. Upscale this to however you want, but it's much less plants and clones to deal with and way easier to manage. All veg/clones will use same ppm.

Have a mama/clone room. A veg room. And the flower room. As long as you have a separateveg room, you wwon't have to worry about veg times and your perpetual will be a breeze.

SOG at that level is hard, if you do the trays perpetual and not the rooms. I have ran 24 lights SOG op for years. 16 plants per 3x3. 4 to 5 day veg.
If I was him, this would be my long term goal. 4 flower rooms, 10k each. One veg/ mother room. 8 600s in that. Veg twice as many plant as you need, flower the strongest ones. Now, the slackers will be "clone donnors" have this rotation with 4 different strains so you don't wear down the genetics from taking clones from clones from clones...ect. You'll only run the veg lights for a total of one week per month saving you a ton of money on power bill.

Keep one plant of each strain under one light incase of clone failure so you don't loose your genetics.

Best of luck, sounds like quite an opportunity.