They built it from the ground up, designing a cannabis cultivation operation that was locally sourced and environmentally responsible to raise “naturally grown cannabis,” says Cohen.

Cannabis Business Times’ Managing Editor Kyle Brown talked with Brach and Cohen about how they planned the grows (30,000 square feet between a greenhouse and warehouse), and what it means to be aware of environment and community in the industry.

Kyle Brown: What were your first steps in getting the grow started?

Anthony Brach: It takes a strong group of diverse individuals with many different backgrounds. It has been a mix of people with … backgrounds in marketing and mergers and acquisitions and accounting. Even one of our guys is a compliance guy that trained in the medical scene. ... So Kelsey and I are … only responsible for the cultivation practices. It is a very compartmentalized group … and everybody is responsible for their own little piece of the puzzle.

We’ve seen where business owners think they can do it all. It really just doesn’t work that way because no one can do everything. You have to focus on ... your strengths … and realize what your weaknesses are. … Then hire or partner with people who are capable of doing things you aren’t.

Brown: How did you pull the team together?

Brach: That’s the crazy thing. Last summer when I was approached, they basically said, “We’ve got the whole team together, except for a grow team.” Finding … [people with] business management skills and marketing people, I mean, all of those jobs exist [from other industries]. But when it comes down to the basis of a cultivation site, you have to find … people ... [who are] able to talk business with business owners and also … able to grow [the] plant.

Brown: How did you plan the specs for the grow?

Kelsey Cohen: We learned a lot from old jobs and past experiences. We had just been … growing a list of … what would be helpful, what would be a dream to have and everything that would possibly be of a necessity to get this off the ground.

Brown: Did you actually make lists? What were the top items on those lists?

Cohen: Yeah, we did. [laughs] We didn’t know what it would entail for our budget with all of our wants. We also had to be realistic.

[At the top of the necessary list were] concrete floors for the greenhouse. We are very nervous with pests and disease … so we think concrete, avoiding having a dirty floor, would help mitigate that. Environmental controls were also high up there.

[For the dream list,] I would love to have an ATP assay tool. It’s a tool where you can swipe any surface, and it measures the ATP and the bacteria giving it off, so you know if your surface is contaminated or not. It’s actually a standard regulation in Canada.

Photo: Bart Glasser

Brown: What does it mean for you to be locally sourced?

Brach: We try to source everything ... first and foremost locally, which is the Western Slope. Then we [try to source within] Colorado, then we go to the western region of the United States. Then ... North America, then Central and South America. Then we start looking at seaport importation.

I would say 95 percent of the stuff we have bought is from North America.

Cohen: It is just a matter of being responsible and wanting to have a very low carbon footprint and be sustainable. …

Also, it pays … to have things locally, even if we have to pay a little bit more; if something were to break or happen, [the company] is right there.

Brach: You can buy fabric pots by the million and import [them] from China. But we paid for them to come from South Carolina, and manufactured in New Mexico. We paid an extra 50 cents per pot — times thousands of pots. But that is less carbon footprint on shipping, and … we are able to map out our sustainability ... and be responsible to the consumer. We are touting our sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Brown: What does “naturally grown cannabis” mean for you?

Cohen: No synthetic nutrients or pesticides. The term “pesticide” is actually really broad. ... We just use no synthetically based spray or pesticides. I would even like to use the word “organic,” but you’re not allowed to in this industry because it is a federal [U.S. Department of Agriculture] term. [But] … we are going for top-grade ingredients for consumers. We are putting in all-natural ingredients and trying to emulate Mother Nature. ... We are really trying to bring a higher standard.

Brach: Like [Kelsey] said, “pesticide” can be a pretty broad term. A pesticide is anything to combat or negate a pest or disease. That can be something as small as wiping tabletops down with a bleach solution or spraying a non-toxic type of essential oil on your plants to protect them. … That is emulating Mother Nature. …

So, in early plant processes, we spray a low dose of essential oils, which can be anything from rosemary to cinnamon, among others. These … occur in [nature] and are simply concentrated [into oils]. Then we put them into a spray and they basically bug the bugs, and the bugs don’t want to be on that plant.

It is a look at problems with prevention instead of solutions. They say “an ounce of prevention,” and it’s completely true in this regard. It’s just a matter of: Do you have the foresight to know what the potential problems are, and are you willing to spend the money up front to not have those problems?

Brown: How do you sell your investors on this?

Brach: The group was lucky enough to have a single-point investor (completely privatized financial backing) — a completely silent partner who, lucky for us, was raised here over on the Western Slope and had a family that has been in agriculture before. He … actually had a pretty basic understanding of agriculture and how hard the work is, and what is involved.

[The “selling”] was more on the lines of coming to the group and saying, “Here are all the preventative measures we can take, and this is how much it costs. Or here are all the reactionary methods and what they cost. But, the difference is that if we do the preventative measures, we don’t have to worry about a negative potential impact on our end product. Whereas, if we react to all of our problems, we are going to be squirming around, taking hits on our end product, taking hits on quality, putting way more labor and money into it.

Brown: What’s a hurdle that caught you off guard in putting the grow together?

Cohen: One of our main hurdles was the smell. People think that they will get high off the smell, whatever our building gives off – which is obviously not true. So, finding cost-efficient and effective smell mitigation was a challenge, especially to fit in with all of our ideals.

Brach: We found a solution, but it’s one of our proprietary solutions, and we are not at liberty to discuss what technology we use.

[A] major hurdle that no one has any control over, especially in Colorado, in the building process, is how adverse weather can affect your timeline for construction.

One of the [other] problems we have is the manufacturing end, and production of our greenhouse facility via [the company we hired], because they’re used to building a couple greenhouses a year. ... Then, boom, the cannabis industry hits, and they are under full demand, and they have not had a chance to increase their production warehouses and shipping routes.

So when they go to manufacture a specialized, high-tech greenhouse, it takes a lot of effort. And then they have dates that don’t necessarily line up. If you have a good project manager, he has a chart of when everything needs to arrive and ... get done. …

One or two days or even a week of a screwed-up timeline from a supplier can really throw a wrench into your system.

Brown: What’s important that you do right from the very start of your grow?

Cohen: To get started, you have to buy a clone from another grow. I found that to be worrisome because I don’t know the practices of that grower. I don’t know if they are being transparent with me, but I am relying on them to give me all of the genetics that we’re going to be using for our greenhouses.

So I could be bringing an infection or insects into this facility that we just invested a lot in. So, being on top of our game when those clones come in so we can mitigate any problems is a top priority.

We toured a lot of grows to try to decide where we were going to buy the clones. Some were great, some weren’t great.

One more thing that is pretty important to get right from the beginning … is the people we hire. I feel they make or break you. … Those are the people who are in the trenches from day to day. People need to be mindful of compliance. They need to be on the same page, and they have to have the same care and pride in their job that you do, and you have to trust them, ultimately.

Brown: How do choose your employees?

Brach: Luckily, we have made some friends in the industry, and you can recruit via contacts and references in certain regions. ... When we [create] a job posting, we define the people [and requirements] we are really looking for. …

Then it just comes down to: Are you willing to put in the hard work? This kind of ties back to what people should know when they’re starting a grow. A grow site is not a manufacturing practice. It is not an industrial complex. It is an agricultural-based business. You are growing plants … and it is 24/7, 365 [days a year]. You don’t get the winters off like the farmers. You don’t get to take a break — the plants don’t. You have to be present all the time, and you have to care. The people really have to have a vested interest in your business.

Part of that is paying people correctly, giving people incentives to stay motivated and treating your people right. Those are the people who are building a business for you. You can’t mistreat them and not pay them correctly.

Commercial cannabis lab testing has come a long way as the trickle of states authorizing medical or recreational markets becomes a steady stream. And with new rules taking effect, insiders expect the testing sector to balloon alongside the core industry it supports.

The sector has found its footing, people who operate and utilize labs say, as an increasingly robust framework for testing is established in states across the country.

In the past year, Colorado labs have helped carry out Governor John Hickenlooper’s zero-tolerance policy for pesticides as medical growers prepare for mandatory product testing.

In Washington, where one lab notoriously gave off-the-charts THC readouts, new rules require that labs participate in proficiency testing, a step toward ensuring reliability.

Nevada’s stringent testing rules — requiring every 5 lbs. of flower to be tested and mandatory terpenes testing — are being watched with interest by neighbors.

And in California, the testing sector is expected to explode when legislation passed last year regulating the state’s medical cannabis industry takes full effect.

“The industry believes that California represents 50 percent of the U.S. cannabis market, and that less than 5 percent of the [current California] market currently tests,” says JmîchaeÎe Keller, president and CEO of Steep Hill Labs, a leading lab with locations in Berkeley, Seattle and Albuquerque.

It’s unclear if existing labs will be able to handle the influx when 5 percent becomes 100 percent. But they have time to prepare. Testing isn’t required to be in place until January 2018.

Derek Peterson, CEO of Terra Tech, which grows and sells medical marijuana in Oakland, Calif., and Las Vegas, says he sees California’s lab sector as a potential opportunity for savvy businessmen.

“We wait three to five days sometimes to get test results back, and that’s with the industry not being mandated, so I think we’re going to hit a bottleneck,” he says. “I’m hoping entrepreneurs wake up and say, ‘I know owning a dispensary sounds attractive and owning cultivation sounds attractive, but here’s a hole in the business that people aren’t paying a lot of attention to where there’s significant economic potential.”

Peterson says his company tests partially “for selfish reasons” to protect against reputational risk, but he believes about 90 percent of his competitors aren’t taking on the voluntary cost.

He says he’s worked with many labs and that over the years, “the testing industry has certainly matured.”

“It has a distance to go to get to the clinical level of other testing, but it will get there because there are people with significant pedigrees, and capital is starting to flow into the industry,” he says.

Opportunity knocks not only in California. Steep Hill, for example, has licensed its name for testing operations in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and Maryland.

Werc Shop co-founder Jeffrey Raber, a prominent testing expert, says his lab has near-term plans to expand into Oregon after closing a Southern California location last year when Pasadena police arrested him after finding hash oil, production of which is legally dicey in the state.

Photo: Medicine Man

But Raber, whose lab currently operates in Washington, expects to reopen operations in California in the future. “We are still working on re-establishing our testing efforts under the new laws,” he says. “We will only operate legally under the new laws and had to find a new city to do so.”

Raber says the anticipated boom in California testing still is somewhat far-off, as draft rules have not been formulated, and it remains unclear what the exact testing parameters will be.

The arrest of Raber, against whom charges have not been filed, was not the only shock to the lab sector last year. Months later in November, a well-respected leader of Colorado’s testing community, CannLabs, closed down after going public, though the exact circumstances around the closure are unclear.

Photo: Courtesy
Medicine Man

Jeannine Machon, co-owner of Colorado’s CMT Laboratories, says she doubts many other labs are considering going public and that the shock has made fellow owners who respected CannLabs cautious about potential business deals.

CannLabs went under about the time mandatory microbial testing took effect, Machon recalls, meaning for remaining labs “it was a tsunami hitting the beach,” resulting in much more business and a deluge of work.

Machon serves on a state advisory board on pesticide use in cannabis and has had a front-row seat as Hickenlooper’s no-pesticides mandate has been implemented, a policy scoffed at by some growers who say people regularly eat a small amounts of pesticides on grocery store produce.

Photo: Courtesy
Jeremy Raber

Hickenlooper’s order, handed down in November 2015, means theoretically that cultivators cannot have any trace of pesticides that aren’t expressly allowed, but Machon says the science isn’t so simple.

“Zero is scientifically impossible,” she says. “We are trying to measure these pesticides in parts per billion and that’s as close as anyone can get, except for non-scientists who just write zero on a piece of paper.”

Machon says she believes a near-zero solution will be offered by the working group, which meets every two or three weeks, and that “I believe the governor will understand that what we come up with is logically zero.”

Photo: Courtesy
Jeannine Machon

She adds: “At this point ..., anyone out here using a product not on the [state department of agriculture’s] list of acceptable pesticides is an idiot and deserves to get busted.”

Still, Machon says the ban has resulted in growers using less-effective products and that “we’ve seen potencies go down and the grows get a little more stressed when you have to be a little more aggressive,” by treating plants more often.

Photo: Courtesy
Steven Bollman

Colorado’s mandate that medical marijuana be lab-tested was slated to take effect in July, but the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) postponed implementation as it proceeds with proficiency testing of labs to license them for testing medical products.

Machon says potency testing appears to have been kicked to August, and other forms of testing later, but the MED has not officially said so.

Reliability on the Rise

Proficiency testing aims to assure labs give accurate readouts. Some labs voluntarily participate in group “ring tests” to tighten results after wide variations among labs in the past undermined credibility.

Sampling plays some role in varying results, but to improve accuracy, labs recalibrate expensive, complicated machines. There’s a general consensus among labs and their customers that results are becoming more reliable.

Andy Williams, co-owner of Medicine Man, a large Colorado cultivation and dispensary business serving recreational and medical users, says years ago he scratched his head at lab variations.

Once, he says, he sent what he believed to be two near-identical samples to different labs and got different results. Another time, he cut a bud sample in two and sent it to the same lab for testing. The results “raised our eyebrows,” he says.

But he says, “The differences in testing is getting better,” as variances have narrowed.

Williams says he used testing to ensure his 40,000-square-foot cultivation facility wasn’t affected by mold, and says he sought pesticide testing before it was required, to stay ahead of the curve.

Photo: Courtesy Steven Bollman

“Testing has helped the industry give consumers a sense of safety, one more distinction from the black market,” he says. “It’s also been helpful on advertising. Customers can look for potency high or low.”

Medicine Man has two dispensaries and is preparing to open a third storefront using the single grow site.

“We’re going to double our production in the same amount of space,” Williams says. “We’ve run experiments like any manufacturing facility,” fiddling with nutrients, mediums and using test rooms to try out innovations. “Testing is a big part of learning how to do things better,” he says. “We test our ingredients because everything is not always listed on the label.”

Behind the scenes, labs have worked intensely among themselves to tighten results. The Emerald Test, a collaborative lab endeavor, has led the way to help improve cannabis testing. The test, offered twice a year, sends a sample to a large number of labs, who then are informed how their results match up against other facilities.

Machon says it’s unclear what the future holds. But she’s optimistic for the testing sector as professionalism, sound science and expanded requirements take hold.

“If you go back two years ago, there was a scientific conference put on by Emerald Scientific with 80 people,” she says. “The Emerald Conference this year had hundreds and hundreds.”

On the finer points, there’s less certainty. Are Nevada’s touted strictures wise or overkill? Is Colorado allowance of testing gaps for growers and edible manufacturers who establish process validation a good idea? Machon say she doesn’t know.

“This is still, for everyone, the grand experiment. Who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong?”

“Let me just be frank. I fundamentally believe that the war on drugs in this country and around the world has been a monumental disaster. It’s been a disaster in public health terms. It’s been a disaster in public safety terms. It’s been a disaster in fiscal terms and a disaster in human rights terms.”

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, at a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs senate committee hearing examining alternative approaches to the war on drugs.

Source: Cannabis Business Times

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALLEN ST. PIERRE

“Allen deserves and ... will receive great credit when people write the history of this movement.”

Kevin Oliver, executive director of NORML’s Washington chapter, on national Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who resigned July 15. Pierre has been the face of the organization since 2005.

Source: Cannabis Business Times

© Sherry Young | Dreamstime.com

“It’s like trying to sell cars, but only having one at a time and you can’t get another for two or three months out.”

Nate, owner of FiveLeaf Organics in Montana (requesting anonymity), about the 2011 Montana Marijuana Act, which limits the amount of patients a provider can have to a total of three. The U.S. Supreme Court refused in June to hear an appeal of the case.

Source: Flathead Beacon

“When children eat this, it can make them very sick because it contains marijuana – which is a drug.”

Suggested age-appropriate language for children about edibles from the Washington Poison Center, which recently unveiled its new child warning sticker (right). In 2015, the center received 272 calls for children exposed to marijuana, according to a center press release.

Source: Washington Poison Control

A greenhouse brings a grow closer to the elements, but the same sun that feeds the plants can also push the temperature far past the comfortable range for cannabis.

One main consideration is whether the greenhouse will be “open” or “closed,” says Nadia Sabeh, agricultural and mechanical engineer for consulting/engineering firm Guttmann & Blaevoet. An open greenhouse has some form of air flow from outside the structure, while a closed greenhouse is structured more like an indoor grow and mostly sealed. But even though an open greenhouse has more interaction with outside air, it doesn’t mean the cooling strategy is ... just to open a window, she says.

Depending on the location of the greenhouse, natural, passive ventilation is an option with ridge vents or open side walls, which can be manual or automated, says Sabeh.

Open Greenhouses

An evaporative cooling pad, or pad and fan cooling, is a common setup for an open greenhouse, says Jeff Lloyd, owner of Emerald Kingdom Greenhouse, a greenhouse supply company in Weaverville, Calif. A wet membrane is hung on one end of the greenhouse with fans drawing outside air through, dropping the temperature. Evaporative cooling also runs with low energy requirements.

“We’ve found that these water walls, accompanied with shade cloth or ground cloth, really can be efficient at lowering [temperature] between 10 and 15 degrees,” he says.

Keith Sprau, founder at Colorado Leaf, LLC, in Pueblo, Colo., relies on a 25-foot by 6-foot cooling pad on the south wall in each of the four greenhouses of his 17,000-square-foot grow, paired off with American Coolair exhaust fans (two 48-inch fans in the veg greenhouses and three 54-inch fans in each of the flower houses).

“We draw the air through there, and our exhaust fans are on the north end,” Sprau says.

Photo: Courtesy John Sakun

The pad and fan keeps cool air moving even at high temperatures, and when Sprau got his original quote for the installation, he doubled the size of the cooling setup to make sure he had the capacity to fight the summer heat.

“It’s been 90 all week, and we’re holding at 76 in all the greenhouses, which is nice,” he says.

Another passive way to regulate temperature in the greenhouse is to just dig deep, says Lloyd. Trenching the greenhouse 36 inches beneath ground level reaches a place in the earth where the temperature is roughly always 60 to 70 degrees. “So instead of trying to heat or cool air that may be 100 degrees or freezing, you can get that ambient underground air temperature of 60, and you’re using a lot less energy to convert to make that 60 degrees hotter or colder,” says Lloyd.

Insulation and ground covering can go a long way toward helping manage a particular temperature regardless of the season, he says, “especially if they’re using a reflective material for the heat.” Placing a reflective ground covering down keeps the heat from being absorbed into the base of the greenhouse in the winter, and ground cloth insulates the cool air inside the greenhouse when used along with an evaporative pad system in the summer.

Just filling the greenhouse with plants makes the temperature more manageable in the summer for John Sakun, owner at Southern Colorado Growers in Rye, Colo. Between harvest and moving new plants in, a section of the concrete floor is exposed, and there’s a noticeable difference, he says.

“There’s still about 30 percent of the concrete flooring that’s definitely absorbing heat,” he says. “Once the room is completely full, it’ll be a lot easier to manage the temperatures because there’s not so much exposed concrete sucking up all that heat. It’s literally hot to the touch.”

Closed Greenhouses

A closed greenhouse offers more control over conditions than an open greenhouse, but usually a little less than an actual indoor grow, says Sabeh. In general, however, the closed system runs similarly to an indoor grow.

Beyond packaged DX or split air conditioning units (more on this can be found in Part I of this series in the May/June issue of Cannabis Business Times; see box below), she suggests choosing better glass, double polycarbonate or other materials that better insulate.

Part of that insulation process for Sprau meant teaming up with his father and brother as the greenhouse construction was finishing and using, “no exaggeration, about 200 tubes of silicone,” to seal the grow as airtight as possible, he says.

“We did every seam, every frame,” says Sprau. “We really went overboard. But there’s a fantastic negative pressure anytime you try to open the greenhouse doors, and that’s what you want.”

Drying It Out

Though the evaporative cooling pad is effective at bringing the temperature down in the greenhouse, it floods the environment with humidity. Sprau uses a Wadsworth controller to manage the grow’s levels and relies mostly on those exhaust fans to pull in drier air from outside.

“As long as it’s not damp outside, it does a great job of holding within about two percent [humidity],” says Sprau.

If exterior humidity is a factor, a desiccant-based system can help, says Kurt Parbst, director of business development for Envirotech Greenhouse Solutions. (Desiccant is a media that absorbs moisture from the air; that media can then be recycled in a desiccant wheel, which collects moisture, then evaporates it with heat as it passes around the wheel. More on this also can be found in Part I.)

When growers irrigate, the sun goes down or supplemental lights are turned off, growers can lose control of relative humidity. “They’re afraid of getting into fungal pressure,” he says.

After the lights go out, air conditioning units can level out temperature quickly, but plants continue transpiring water into the room for some time after, raising the relative humidity. When facing those high pressures, a desiccant system running parallel to augment dehumidification could make the difference, says Parbst.

Photo: Courtesy John Sakun

Desiccant systems are useful in many situations (like drying in cooler temperatures), but it takes a lot of energy to heat the material, says Clif Tomasini, product manager for Quest Dehumidifiers.

“You’re paying the price every month in electricity,” says Tomasini.

He suggests keeping the greenhouse temperature a little warmer at night, around 70 degrees, and using a refrigerant-based dehumidifier system. That uses the same basic build as an air conditioner, but is geared toward drying air efficiently instead of cooling it. Compared to a desiccant-based system, it uses about a quarter of the energy per pint, he says.

Arleigh Kraus uses a dehumidifier in both of her 1,000 square-foot greenhouses in Knox County, Maine. Humidity is a constant problem when the wind carries in from the ocean, she says. In addition to ventilation and an industrial fan in each greenhouse, she uses a Quest Power Dry 4000 to manage the pressure.

“In California or Colorado, [ventilation] would definitely work, but here, you just need [the dehumidifier],” she says. “You need to pull moisture out of the air, especially at night.”

Photo: Courtesy John Sakun

Though buying the separate dehumidification system was about 30 percent of the upfront cost of her budget, that money is made up elsewhere, she says.

“The thing is, you’re basically getting free light. [And] without using a dehumidifier, you’re looking at a minimum of 25-percent upwards to 50-percent loss of product just from mold,” she says. “The cost of purchasing [a dehumidifier], running your electric bill [up a bit] definitely outweighs the profit loss you’ll have if you don’t use it.”

Fighting the Cold

You have many options to heat a greenhouse, starting with the choice between hot air or hot water, says Sabeh. Either one can run through pipes placed near the grow or in the flooring to provide heat through convection.

Radiant floor heating and cooling is becoming a more common solution for greenhouses, because it places heat near the plants, says Lloyd.

Sakun keeps his grow warm during the winter with a radiant heat system from BioTherm, using a boiler that feeds a mix of water and antifreeze through pipes that run about three inches inside the concrete pad under his greenhouse. The system keeps heat right near the root zone.

Being able to control where the heat is placed is important for each stage of growth, says Parbst. During the vegetative stage of the plant, the root zone is the focus, which means under-crop heating. At the flower stage, “the root zone and the canopy should be in balance,” he says.

For him, that means some heat from the company’s Agam VLHC (ventilated latent heat converter) desiccant system, supplemented by hot water heating around the perimeter of the grow or overhead. The system serves mainly to dehumidify the grow, but also can feed some of that energy back to the grow as heat, he says.

Like an indoor grow, hot water also can heat a coil connected to a fan to blow the hot air out into a greenhouse, says Sabeh.

When it comes to hot air from a furnace running on natural gas, propane or other fossil fuels, there are energy caveats. Sakun uses a Lennox propane heater to assist his radiant heat setup, but he relies on radiant heat to get him through winter at a lower energy cost compared to his propane heater.

The choice of furnace fuel generally comes down to how tightly a grower wants to control humidity, says Lloyd.

“One thing about natural gas heaters, when they combust, they create a level of moisture in that process, so growers who are really worried about molds will sometimes stray away from natural gas heaters and go for electric. The electric is really dry,” he says.

He has also seen some clients go with a wood-burning option for greenhouses where that fuel is more available, he says.

Efficiency should be a primary concern, says Lloyd, and growers should look for high-efficiency models even if they cost more up front.

To boost that efficiency, insulation comes into play for Sprau. Whenever he knows a bad snowstorm is on the way, he’ll shut all the curtains in the greenhouse to help seal in heat, he says, using about 30 percent less energy for heat.

Another relatively inexpensive insulation trick for greenhouses in a cold environment Lloyd has seen is placing a double layer of film on the outside of a structure, then inflating that film with a blower.

Free Resources

The building itself is a factor in keeping cool. The structure’s placement relative to sun’s path determines how much direct sunlight it will get at particular points of the day, and how much shade, says Lloyd. If a greenhouse is in a high-temperature climate, orienting the greenhouse to provide some relief during the hottest part of the day will save in energy costs overall.

“Those guys [in hot climates] can orient their building to the point they’re getting some afternoon shade, after 3 p.m.,” he says. “Their building is just going to stay cooler. … Orienting can be a trick to help with your energy costs.”

In terms of overall cost, managing the goal temperature in a greenhouse isn’t as hefty as it is for an indoor grow, says Sakun, who also maintains a 4,000-square-foot warehouse grow. For his greenhouse grow, about 10 percent of his overall budget was spent on HVAC systems. But for his indoor grow, “it was almost double; about 20 percent of our overall cost went to AC,” he says.

Working with greenhouses to get the most out of potentially cheaper natural resources for heating and cooling is a necessary part of staying competitive in the industry, he says.

“Obviously we have supplemental lights in there because it’s a year-round room, but it’s utilizing our free, wonderful sun,” says Sakun. “If you want to [dedicate] time and effort and money toward your plants, you have to take money away from heating costs, cooling costs, lighting costs. If you can minimize those costs, you can put more effort into the actual plant itself, and that’s what we try to do.”