Premier Cannabis LLC - LED run Tier 1 in WA

Greetings from Washington State!

I think it's about time to share what we've been working on for the last 18 months. Welcome to our grow show for Premier Cannabis LLC, a new, family run tier 1 producer/processor on the East side of the state. We're almost finished building and moving in and are just waiting on the Liquor Control Board, which will get back to us in a couple weeks, take or give a month.

*Prepare for the hate train*

I am proud to say we are running a large scale experiment. We're flowering with 650w Lumigrow Pros. Many have been waiting for a long time to see if these things can compete on a commercial scale. Well, I'm about to find out! And I hope to share some of the news along the way.

As for the other nuts and bolts of the operation, we're using soil and running drip lines hooked to a fertigation injector system on a hand cart. We're starting with the GH 3 part and a few different additives and are trying out a lot of physical controls to limit pests, rather than chemical ones. Cleanliness, cleanliness, cleanliness... Our intention is to run a completely pesticide-free op but we'll see how it goes.

Hmmm... anything else? I think our HVAC is overbuilt but we'll have to see about that. Plant spacing and size for the first crop is going to depend on how many clones we can get rooted of each strain, but we have about 30 different moms and about 30 different strains in seed form so we have plenty to choose from. We're also running a couple CBD strains. I'm trying to pick up the cuts this weekend.

Oh, and the most important part - the trim colors. GO SEAHAWKS!

I think that's it for now. Welcome! And you can also catch updates on our Facebook page, which will be going up in a few days. I'm also adding all of these pictures and more to my album.

Build in pic time!

Veg room (the 2 tiered bench is for cloning)


Flower room 1


Flower room 2


The main grow area hallway - soon to be full of barrels


Finishing up the exterior walls!

very interesting....

really want to see what those lights can do. Nice warehouse.

Looking forward to this!

G81

Welcome and nice Facility, good ceiling height .. sativa heaven huh

Gonna be interesting to see whats getting pumped out of thre once ya up n running.

Would be cool with a list of the mothers and seeds !

Big up

Looks awesome!!!! I really like the statement, "I Think the HVAC is overbuilt" . Haha!!! I don't think that is bad thing at all. Right now I would kill for a mini-split or central air where I grow at.

It should make your HVAC system work less to keep the temps you want, and in turn the life of the unit should increase. I can't wait to see this grow in action!!

Nice setup Sir, very clean looking. Look forward to seeing it filled with plants. You've obviously done your homework on the led's, are you going with them for the electricity savings and low heat out put?

DoubleTripleOG said:

Looks awesome!!!! I really like the statement, "I Think the HVAC is overbuilt" . Haha!!! I don't think that is bad thing at all. Right now I would kill for a mini-split or central air where I grow at.

It should make your HVAC system work less to keep the temps you want, and in turn the life of the unit should increase. I can't wait to see this grow in action!!

Click to expand...

I know jack about HVAC, but have heard tradesmen say overkill is almost as bad as underkill.



But to the main event. Those racks look prime, custom built?

Tagged

Dude congrats!!

Long way from when we were talking a bit ago !!

Thanks for the compliments and warm wishes!

High ceilings are awesome. We can do whatever strains we want and I'm thinking it'll make handling heat/humidity and airflow a lot easier. The main problem is that we can't have a strain that takes twice as long and pulls one and a quarter of the weight. We're not limited by plant count so we can experiment with high count SOGs to boost that but right now we have too much overhead and too many other details to nail down. Probably won't have to break into seeds for at least a year, though, so that'll give us some breathing room. I have 5-6 packs of pure or almost pure hazes and some WOS wild thai I've been meaning to go pheno hunting through and if we can find some heavy 12 weekers with good potency I'm going to be tickled pink. EVERYBODY loves pure sativas and regardless of how they're marked, there are almost none in 502 stores for obvious reasons. A lot of other ops just print out "sativa" stickers and slap em on whatever their superhybrid of the day is because every customer asks for sativa but only a few actually know the difference in a taste test. We just can't be running 16 weekers when our competition can push out two crops of their generic bubba crosses to our one unless our crop is really big and really good.

As for the LEDs, we had two main reasons. The first is that it costs about the same or a little less to build in commercially with LEDs. Can be a lot less depending on the energy rebates you get but we're on federal power and they hate us. The fixtures themselves are more expensive but the wiring, transformers, and HVAC all cost less. Ends up close to a wash for build in and is saving us I think about 3 grand a month on power long term.

The other reason was safety. That was the boss-mother's call, not mine. For some reason she was uncomfortable having people work long shifts around 3 phase and rooms full of 700 degree unprotected bulbs. Go figure, right? I was and still am pretty crusty about it, but all it takes is for one dumbass to stick his face in a bulb and file an L&I claim for a permanently disfiguring injury to get us fined out of existence. Plus, you know, we'd rather not disfigure our employees. Probably a good long term call assuming these LEDs can actually push out weight. I did my homework on them and I think they probably can, so we're going for it.

The full mom and seed list is going to have to go up later. All that stuff's scattered around but I have to enter it all into the traceability program once we move in. I can slap that up here in about 5 minutes at that point. I do know that we're going to be running Cindy 99, ATF, and Chem 91 in the first crop. That's one room's worth, anyway.

As for the tables, yep, they're custom built. My brother and the building contractor put them together over a few days out of horse fencing and what I believe are leftover metal studs from building the walls. Painted green to seal, small casters on the bottom. Should last for 20 years at a fraction of the cost compared to buying premade units. Took a lot of cheap elbow grease from more skilled hands than mine, though.

Nice dude, this looks really cool, and thanks for sharing all this info - very detailed and fun to read.

Subbed & looking forward to your next post.

fellow WA eastsider....nice operation...LUV the effort and attitude... top notch... should be a splendid show...

Haha, you won't have to wait long. next post time! Forgot something I'd meant to add. I'm going to link this up pre-emptively since I anticipate this question coming up here sooner or later and it just did in a different thread.

For a long, partial explanation of what went into the choice to run LEDs, here is a study by Utah State comparing Gavitas/ePaps and LEDs for conventional greenhouses and a wall of text I made explaining the article a bit and my take on the LED market in general. If you're thinking about making the switch, this is for you. Otherwise I'd suggest sparing yourself.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099010

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6732624&postcount=31

subbed

Mikell said:

I know jack about HVAC, but have heard tradesmen say overkill is almost as bad as underkill.



But to the main event. Those racks look prime, custom built?

Click to expand...

Former hvac tradesman here. What you have heard is correct. Oversized equipment can have just as many problems as undersized. Best to size eveything correct the first time.

Yeah, I think the big stick for us has been trying to balance latent and sensible loads. HVAC engineers don't have data for moisture generation in controlled environment agriculture so they're being super conservative and overshooting everything. Our HVAC system is overbuilt for the initial sensible load but is undershot for initial latent + sensible. I'm thinking our HVAC build in is pretty close to the button for sensible post expansion but we had to fork it out up front. It was just one of a dozen increased start up costs that were required to pass inspections that I felt like griping about it since I got a facepalm email from our HVAC engineer right before I made the post.

I realize people don't generally try to isolate out one versus the other in their HVAC equipment but my understanding is that our units are specially designed to focus on sensible load and the required economizer cycles are what affect their latent ratings. We're going to be running economizer cycles as infrequently as possible to better control environmental consistency so we had to approach the problem a little differently.

Also, good news! Our inspection is getting bumped up. I have a sleepless night revising licensing paperwork ahead of me but we should be getting a call to schedule the final inspection tomorrow afternoon! Happy daze!

Hope it all rolls smooth for you

nice man dream operation right there. bet the licensing was alot of fun, but hey id rather go through that than deal with the cops like i still have to.