Revered cannabis brands gain followers for a variety of reasons. Raven Grass supplies unique CBD blends and rare strains to the Washington market. Buddies Brand produces consistent single-source concentrates and cartridges for the entire West Coast. Cookies brought the Girl Scout Cookie strain to California and rode the momentum to establish dispensaries across the United States. Behind the scenes, these brands are supplied by cultivators.
In a new industry like this, there is an array of cannabis cultivation facility design. Good designs, built for efficiency, make cultivation easy, and allow the brand to grow. Poor cannabis cultivation facility designs create bottlenecks in production capacity and losses. Building a successful brand starts with building a cannabis cultivation facility designed for maximum efficiency.
Accessible Vegging Space, Adaptable Drying Space
New cannabis cultivators think about one thing—cultivating. They fail to consider what comes before and after flowering. Vegging and drying are equally important to producing a large flowering yield. Having plants ready for your flowering room immediately shortens the downtime in your facility. For cultivators who practice continual or rotation harvests, large plants are a must.
Your vegging space should have enough room for cloning, germinating, transplanting, and cleaning. The size of the room is negotiable; many people find success in racking systems. A rule of thumb that some follow is the 25% rule. Your veg plants will need 25% of the space they fill in flower for vegging. A 1,000sq foot flower room will need 250sq feet for vegging.
Two-tier cultivation designed by Tyler Hanson
Having drying space capable of holding the contents of an entire room is the bottom line. A well-designed cultivation facility will have variable drying capacity. If half of a room needs to be harvested early, do you have the space to dry it? If you need to harvest over 5 days, do you have the ability to compartmentalize your material? Adding wet material to a drying room over a period of days swings the humidity. Humidity fluctuations lead to mold and losses.
Both the vegging and drying spaces should be easily accessible. A central vegging space means less distance traveled for plants. Many world-class cultivation facilities have a central hallway. Vegging plants and harvested plants can move along this hallway without passing through other flowering spaces. This limits disease transfer and speeds up the processes.
A greenhouse at the CSU Horticulture Center on Center Avenue with new Philips LED lighting. Credit: Steve Newman
More Height, More Light
Space is expensive, but investing in higher ceilings whenever possible pays long-term dividends. There are many ways to train your plants, all with the goal of supporting the most bud. More space under more light translates to maximum yields. Height in your room allows you to adapt the height of your lighting. Some strains stretch more than others, but lights were designed to be a particular distance from the canopy.
Furthermore, lights have a very specific throw and field. Cross lighting for maximum efficiency is extremely important and variable depending on the fixture. Rolling beds allow you to utilize the most light possible in a room. With only one aisleway, but access to all of your plants, maximum efficiency can be achieved.
More height also translates to more efficiency in your labor. Higher ceilings allow you to utilize raised beds. When your workers don’t have to hunch over to water or manicure plants, they work faster. They also allow you to clean the floors under the plants. Cleanliness is the first step in any good pest management program. Building for maximum efficiency means building higher ceilings.
Function Not Flashy
Many people designing a cannabis cultivation facility fail to recognize that function is more important than flash. Building for maximum efficiency means using the best product for the need, not the prettiest one. HVAC is a great example of this. Facilities often outfit their rooms with conditioning units that are too large for their space.
It is actually better to have a smaller unit, running frequently, than an oversized unit. Part of air conditioning is dehumidification. Large units kick on and cool the room so quickly that they don’t have sufficient time to dehumidify. A smaller unit not only dehumidifies, but it also provides more consistent temperatures.
Flooring and wall coverings also follow this mantra. Floors and walls that are easy to clean are more important than reflective ones. Yes, I’ve seen wood flooring in a processing room. Was it beautiful, certainly. Was it functional, certainly not. Seamless flooring is the easiest to clean, and most efficient. Hands down, the best designs I’ve seen for clean, controlled rooms are in the cheese-making industry.
The Public Health Agency of Los Angeles County published construction guidelines to ensure cannabis facility floors meet standards mirroring the food processing and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries. These standards in cannabis cultivation facility design lend to maximum efficiency.
Ask for Help
Don’t let pride get in your way of designing a cannabis cultivation facility for maximum efficiency. If you want your brand to be prolific and successful, ask for help. Many companies in the industry are willing to give tours and advice freely. For more sophisticated help, cannabis consultants can provide you with examples of their work. Reputable companies will demonstrate designs mindful of cultivation efficiency.
