1. Pre-Planning is Essential
Pre-planning based on a facility’s location is a major factor Rivero considers when designing an indoor facility, he says. The sun and weather patterns, power and water sources, municipal regulations and neighbors are all items that should be assessed when planning the design of an efficient system, he notes.
Choosing the proper HVAC system is also based on location and a company’s business model, he says. Operators must consider the lighting system, square footage and whether there are multiple rooms or areas within that square footage. Pre-planning is important, and the efficiency of an HVAC system relies heavily on the desired temperature and humidity levels.
“Some types of air conditioning units that work in Tucson, Ariz., might be completely different than Portland, Ore., efficiency-wise,” Rivero says.
Pre-planning based on a facility’s location is a major step when designing an indoor facility. Photo by Eben Waggoner (Yerba Buena).
2. Maintain a Stable Environment
“Plants like an extremely stable environment,” Rivero says, and adds that the more thought given to environmental factors and how the plants will interact with that environment, the more success an indoor cultivation is likely to have.
“Being able to control every portion of the environment to the smallest wavelength is really important,” he says. “The more data that gets analyzed, the more easily people are going to be able to understand what their facility is doing, and the more you analyze each component of the environment, the easier it’s going to be to optimize the efficiency of your systems.”
Cultivators will not be able to know exactly how the environment will behave until they turn the lights on, put the plants in and water them, Rivero says, but the more information a grower tracks, the easier it will be to see which environmental factors affect which aspects of the plants.
3. Consider your IPM
Pest prevention should be as important as production in an indoor facility, Rivero says, because without one, the other cannot exist.
“In designing a building layout, as well as a program, it’s extremely important to keep pest management … as part of that schedule,” he says.
When designing rooms, ensure it is convenient to get to every plant to perform maintenance, visually assess each plant for problems and create adequate airflow for the plants, Rivero advises. Environmental consistency should also be considered.
“The more consistent your environment is, the less likely [it is] to have outbreaks,” Rivero notes. “Outbreaks of pests [and] outbreaks of pathogens all come from unstable environments or unstable plant health.”
Each plant should be accessible in order to perform maintenance and visually assess plants for problems. Photo by Eben Waggoner (Yerba Buena).
4. Embrace Challenge When Scaling Up
Many cultivators have a difficult time challenging themselves with new procedures when expanding their indoor facilities and programs, Rivero says, and may shy away from change.
“Most growers have a hard time challenging themselves by doing things differently, meaning going out of their comfort zone of what they’ve done in the 20 years in their garage or in their closet,” he says.
Growers should embrace challenges and take the time to understand how to scale up and create new systems and SOPs for their expanded facilities.
5. Explore New Technology
The Resource Innovation Institute, an organization that promotes and quantifies energy and water conservation in the cannabis industry, recently launched its Cannabis PowerScore tool to allow cultivators to compare the efficiency of their grows with others, Rivero says.
“It’s a free tool that growers can [use to] input all their metrics on power consumption, location, and it tells them the efficiency on their lighting and their HVAC and tells them, based off of their location, how they can be a little bit more efficient,” he says.
By exploring this and other new technologies, growers can constantly learn more about their operations and improve upon them.
Top image: © Eric Limon | Adobe Stock
Casey Rivero headshot by Eben Waggoner (Yerba Buena)
