CE+C’s Cannabis Cultivation Facility Services
CE+C provides a full range of engineering for cannabis grow, cultivation, and extraction facilities. Our services include HVAC, plumbing, electrical, controls, fire protection, security, lighting, permitting support, troubleshooting, and life safety.
Our service is tailored to your unique business and facility needs. Our cannabis grow facility designs are sustainable, reliable, constructable, and maintainable – spend time running your business, not fighting your equipment or facility systems.
CE+C’s Top Tips for Successful Indoor Commercial Cannabis Grow Facility Design
Read on for key advice and considerations we want to highlight for your grow facility. When you have your own grows, your plants are the most valuable resource your business has, so you want to give them everything they need to thrive. That means your commercial cannabis grow facility design needs to include:
Contact us to learn how CE+C can help with your indoor cannabis cultivation facility.
Temperature Control in your Indoor Cannabis Grow Facility Design
Temperature control in your cannabis grow facility design is critical to keep cannabis plants and facility staff happy and healthy. But HVAC and temperature control can mean high energy costs. Heat pumps, systems that move heat from one location to another instead of creating heat by burning something, can maintain facility temperatures while minimizing energy use.
The lights in your cannabis grow rooms add significant heat to your grow. Further, many locations need to be heated when lights are off. The air in your grow-house needs to be overcooled to dehumidify it, then reheated to prevent condensation and mold/mildew issues.
At CE+C, we’re passionate about heat pumps as an energy-saving solution for temperature control in grow facilities. Contact us to learn more.
For all of these processes, heat pumps use only about a third of the energy that other systems would. Heat pumps also allow “free” reheat of air that is cooled for dehumidification, effectively using the hot side and cold side of the cycle at the same time. And if you’re concerned about using bleeding edge technology, worry not; heat pumps have been around for more than a century. They’re becoming more popular now as many states mandate them as a way to combat climate change. But even if they’re not required, we highly recommend using them in your cannabis grow facility design as a simple way to lower your energy costs, giving you a higher profit margin.
Lighting in your Commercial Cannabis Grow Facility Design
Your plants require light to survive, and the right light will help them thrive throughout every stage of their growth. Seedlings need different light than a plant in the flowering stage, but there are even more choices to make. We see many growers moving to LED systems in their cannabis grow facility design, and there are good reasons to make that choice. It’s flexible, energy-efficient, and cost-effective.
Pros of LED Lighting for Cannabis Cultivation
Cons of LED Lighting for Cannabis Cultivation
Overall, in most cases, we recommend LED lighting as your most flexible, cost-effective solution for healthy and high-yielding cannabis grow facilities.
Improving your Cannabis Yields with CO2 Enrichment in your Cannabis Grow Facility Design
Many cannabis growers are experimenting with CO2 enrichment as a way to increase their yields. CO2 is necessary for photosynthesis, and the benefits increase as you add more CO2 into your grow house air. The results of CO2 enrichment are well-documented in other areas of agriculture, and the practice of CO2 enrichment is generally accepted. It is also expensive and may be out of reach for new producers.
Code Requirements for CO2 in Indoor Cannabis Cultivation Facilities
Cannabis grow facilities with CO2 enrichment systems over 100 lbs. trigger more stringent code requirements that add to your building and operating expenses. Part of those code requirements include enhanced safety systems and emergency exhaust, as what’s good for your plants can be deadly to your staff. CO2 levels above 5000 ppm is dangerous for humans (and is the OSHA limit), with 35000 ppm considered lethal. However, environments up to 10,000 ppm are proven to have a positive impact on cannabis crop yields, so enrichment is definitely a factor worth considering in your cannabis grow facility design.
CE+C Tip: Make sure you understand what your jurisdiction requires before you make your decision about CO2 enrichment in your cannabis grow facility. It’s a choice you want to explore very carefully. Fortunately, there are other ways to protect your crop and encourage maximum yields that bring fewer concerns along with them.
Air Quality & Humidity in your Commercial Cannabis Grow Facility
Controlling air quality in your cannabis grow facility is a key factor in having a healthy grow. Your plants prefer a specific level, which can vary from strain to strain. The right level of humidity can also reduce instances of mold, a problem that can render your entire crop worthless. There are multiple ways to incorporate dehumidification into your cannabis grow facility design, with significant cost and energy impacts.
Industrial Ventilation for Indoor Cannabis Cultivation
Proper industrial ventilation and HVAC in your commercial grow facility allows you to maintain precise control of temperature and humidity in the range that makes your strains happy. Beyond that, your system can filter out pests and diseases from your outside air intakes so they can’t harm your plants. Filtration isn’t just important for air coming in; your ventilation system can also meet local odor control regulations, which are becoming more and more common across the country. Some growers actually incorporate odor control into their cannabis grow facility design where it is not required as a means of enhancing the security of their crops.
Energy Use in Commercial Cannabis Cultivation
All of these cannabis grow facility design elements are very energy-intensive, which means keeping your plants happy can suck up a lot of cash. In fact, cannabis cultivation is one of the most energy-intensive industries around. It can be challenging to find a balance between a healthy cannabis grow and energy bills you can afford, and this balance can factor into facility upgrades and expansions.
How an Expert can Help you Plan your Cannabis Grow Facility Design
To roll it all up, the systems in your cannabis grow facility design matter to the health of your plans and the cost of doing business. The choices you make now will have impacts far into the future. Make sure you’re making both the best individual choices, and ones that will all work together to give you a healthy, productive grow.
An expert cannabis engineer like us can guide you through the process of planning your cultivation facility and getting occupancy permits.
CE+C & Cannabis Grow Facility Design
Cannabis Engineering + Compliance can help you research and design your cannabis grow facility for your jurisdiction’s code requirements. We are experts in creating cannabis grow facility designs that meet your profit and production goals while maintaining life safety and code compliance.
CE+C’s Grow Facility Design Portfolio
CE+C’s Grow Facility Design Approach
CE+C can get you a reliable, maintainable cannabis grow facility design. With more than 70 completed cannabis projects and the backing of an established parent company, you know we’re here for the long-term. Our engineers are passionate about developing holistic, custom solutions that meet your commercial grow’s needs, and which will help you reach your goals for your grow and cultivation facility. Some design companies give you the same implementations they offer to every grower. At CE+C, part of our work is getting to know you and your cannabis facility, and finding the right mix of settings and equipment for you. Your business is like no other, and engineering for your cannabis grow facility design should be, too.
Call us today: 206.385.3417