Commercial Grow Room Setup: The Tent Mistake Killing Your Yield

The Growers MBA podcast is back. Host James sits down with Elliot Gorfaine, Green Thumb Depot's head commercial consultant and one of the most experienced cultivators in the industry, to break down how to set up a commercial grow the right way and stop leaving yield and money on the table.

If you are scaling up from a tent or garage grow into a commercial facility, this one is for you. Elliot walks through the room layout the pros actually use, why grow tents quietly eat your margins, and the changes that boost both yield and cash flow.

In this episode:
- Why a commercial grow runs on 4 flower rooms, and how the 2-week cycle keeps every room full
- Grow tents vs rolling benches, and the economies of scale most new growers miss
- HPS vs LED, plus the rebate strategy that helped one farm get roughly 60,000 dollars of lights for around 15,000
- Why 480V beats 240V, and how high voltage frees up your entire facility
- The rhizosphere mistake: how salts and hypochlorous acid strip the flavor, terpenes, and shelf life out of flower that looks perfect

Chapters:
(00:00) Welcome back: the Growers MBA relaunch and meet Elliot Gorfaine
(01:05) The optimized commercial grow: why you want 4 flower rooms
(02:50) Grow tents vs rolling benches and the economies of scale problem
(05:50) Lighting and electricity: where commercial growers overspend
(07:00) HPS vs LED, and the rebate that got 60K of lights for 15K
(08:50) 240V vs 480V: why high voltage unlocks your facility
(11:20) The rhizosphere: how salts and hypochlorous acid kill your terpenes
(13:50) Call before you waste money, and a note on staying humble
(15:00) Next episode: dehumidifiers

Have a question about your own setup? That is exactly what Elliot is here for. Reach out early, before you spend money you did not need to or lose a harvest to something avoidable.

Talk to a consultant and shop gear: https://greenthumbdepot.com

Subscribe so you do not miss Episode 2, where we go deep on dehumidifiers.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, this video is for educational purposes only. Please do not break the law. Alright, hey everyone. Welcome back to the Growers MBA podcast. We've been on a little bit of a hiatus, but we're back. Stronger than ever, better than ever. We recently actually hired Elliot here, Elliot Gorfane. Elliot has probably more experience than anyone I've ever met in the industry. I've talked to a lot of people. I can pretty confidently say that there's not many people on this planet that know more about growing cannabis than Mr. Elliot Gorfane right here. He tells me about a lot of the calls he has with our customers. Elliot is our head consultant over at GreenThamdepot.com. You know, after these long conversations I had with Elliot, I was just like, man, you have so much information out there. We got to put this stuff online. So decided to reignite the Growers MBA podcast, bring Elliot on board. We're just going to do little snacks here, one topic per conversation, maybe 20 to 30 minutes at max. Have Elliot dive into something really, really deep, whatever it's going to be. Today, Elliot, you were telling me the other day about a grower, a DOC, who gave us a call, and he just got hired at this new grow. And he goes in and sees this big commercial grow. They've got tents, they've got just a completely inefficient way that they're doing things. They've got grow tents inside of their facility. And you were telling me like how bad of an idea that was. I mean, obviously everybody does things a little bit differently, but how much more efficient they could be with that. And so you're telling me that this just really isn't the standard commercial way of doing things. So tell me a little bit, what is the most optimized setup for a commercial growth facility?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

So in a commercial growth facility, you really want your flower rooms, big flower rooms, you want four flower rooms or multiples of four because of the growth cycle in the flower phase. And you know, then you'll have your veg room, your pre-veg, and your harvesting, post-process, post-harvest processing, and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Okay, and what I mean, what what's the point of that? Like why why do you want three rooms? Why do you want three flower rooms and one veg room?

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah, well, four actually. But yeah, the main reason it has to do with the plant's life cycle. So most cannabis plants that are grown indoors, we pretty much stick to give or take an eight-week flower cycle. And so if you have four flower rooms, you can stagger them. So you're harvesting one flower room every two weeks. And that allows you to move everything through the cycle every two weeks. And it also works out perfectly on the vegetative and propagation side. Because when you take your clones, they take about two weeks to root, hopefully faster, but about two weeks, it gives them some spare time. And then you can put them in a pre-veg for about two weeks, and you can put them in a veg for about two weeks. So with four flower rooms, every two weeks you're harvesting, every two weeks you're taking cuts and you're moving everything through the whole process every two weeks. And it also takes about two weeks to dry the flower. So that way you never have any wasted space and you don't have to make any rooms larger or smaller than they really need to be. It's the perfect balance.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

And how does that compare to what our customer was doing or this DOC who came into this new grow with tents? You know, how is that tent setup compared to this more optimized setup that you just talked about?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Well, gosh, in this case, I would explain it a little bit differently than the phased what I was just talking about. The real reason why you want to give it away from tents is economies of scale. So when you have a grow tent, there's a lot of wasted space. And so on a commercial side, you're gonna have a big open room with what they call rolling benches, right? So these are fixed benches with a top that rolls back and forth 12 to 18 inches. And the way it works is that you can create a canopy in the entire room, except for one aisle. And the rolling benches, you'll spread them apart in one area and then another area, and it allows you to create a movable aisle through that huge canopy. And it's all about optimizing for you know, maximizing the canopy, the flowering canopy in your group. So that's one of the ways that you can really make efficient use of the condoms to scale. And then another way is that you can buy larger equipment, you can run it at higher voltage, and you save money, and there's a lot of caveats to that. When you're working in a tent, you're cutting down on your canopy square footage, and you're also having massive amounts of redundant machinery, and it's very difficult for the labor, the people that are doing the work to get in there and do what they have to do. So you're basically losing out on all the benefits of the economies of scale.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

And why do you think it is? You know, I mean, this seems like it's a pretty known system to do it this way, but it does seem like, you know, at least once a week you're telling me about some call you just had where some people were just doing things. I guess not, I guess the only way to say it is optimized, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you got to come from somewhere. And, you know, for a tent grower, someone who's been growing maybe in their garage, or maybe they had a small legacy grow and they were using tents, there's a certain fear to doing something differently. And you you do what you know. And this is for pretty much anyone, you know, and and any situation. But with growing, doing what you know in a tent setup, and then trying to multiply that. In this case that you were talking about, they have about 35 flowering tents and some veg tents and some mom tents. And it makes sense from a fear perspective because you've done this a million times, you know it worked, and it works, and you don't have to change anything. But it absolutely does not make sense when it comes to the economics of a commercial grow. And you got to remember, it might have worked when you were growing a little bit, you know, for your friends and family or whatnot. But when you're growing commercially, you have a lot more overhead, you have taxes, fees, regulations, and all there's all sorts of things you have to consider. And those economies that you were working for you in a small grow in your garage in a tent are not going to work when you're doing a commercial operation. So you need to you need to make that transition. Absolutely. And that's what we're here for, is to help that.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

And it does seem like a lot of the most successful growers that we work with, they are constantly looking to optimize their spend. They're constantly looking to optimize their electricity spend. They're looking to maximize canopy size, right? I mean, we're always selling these under canopy grow lights just to make sure that every inch of that plant is getting some sort of exposure. And so if I'm understanding correctly, you know, it it seems like if someone comes in this way, they they're working out of a tent. You're you're probably working with a lot of different D hues, probably working with a lot of different environment things, right? When you could just get one or a couple different D hues to fit the entire thing, right? You could have a much more efficient way of doing lighting. It just seems like in general, moving from that setup that we were just talking about and coming over to this more optimized setup is just gonna save you money. So not only are you gonna save on cost, you're gonna get way more yield, which is just like the double whammy. It's like what everybody wants, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, you hit the nail on the head. And there's a lot of ways that you can optimize for cost efficiencies and yield. I mean, what you just mentioned with the under canopy lights is great to increase yield. You know, another way is you know, everybody's switching from HPS to LEDs, they've been doing that for a while. That is a cost efficient thing. When you're working with an HID light, so HID would be metal halide for veg or HPS for flour, those consume a lot of electricity and they put out a lot of heat. And anytime you're putting out heat, you've got to cool that heat. So then, you know, you're spending electricity to cool the heat, you know, and and you're you're spending electricity that's turning into heat, then you're spending more electricity to get rid of that heat. So, you know, LEDs are, you know, everybody everybody's pretty much using those nowadays for that reason. And there's other reasons as well. You don't have to replace the bulbs and stuff like that. And a huge thing, which a lot of people aren't aware of, oddly enough, because you would think that they would be if they were commercial growers. But rebates, rebates are huge. When you convert from an HPS facility to an LED facility, it it really depends on where you're located, but you you can save a ton of money. And we work with a rebate company, and we always ask that at the very beginning whenever someone's looking for lights. Say, have you have you checked out the rebates? We can do that for you. Let's get you some rebateable lights so that you can save a ton of money on it.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

I mean, the rebates are absolutely crazy. You know, I was just remembering that working with that big farm when you first came on, it was one of your first clients you worked with, and you got them like 60k of lights for like $15,000 or something inside. That's right. And yeah, that that absolutely blew my mind. And I mean, you you held their hand through that entire process, right? You just literally helped them fill all the paperwork, you sourced the lights, you did everything for them, right? So that that was like that's just one of the few ways that we can help you out with. So on top of that, I mean, you know, obviously there's a ton of room to save money with lights, a ton of room to optimize electricity, which is something that you I know you're constantly talking about, yeah, is optimizing the plugs, right? And so Ellie, I know that you love 480 volt. Like I constantly hear you talking about that with our customers. So, you know, what is the benefit of 480 voltage? Why should a grower consider looking for number one, looking for buildings that have it, or number two, potentially upgrading their entire system?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

So the two things that are gonna constrain or two of the main things that are are kind of fixed that are gonna constrain your production capability is your square footage, right? How much canopy you have. And then a lot of times people will get a warehouse and they won't have high voltage on the panel. So maybe they can go up to 240 only, right? And then when you're using 240 volt machinery, it uses twice the amps. The same exact machine is gonna draw twice the amps as if you use 480. So what happens is when you when you go up to high voltage, instantly you can put twice as much equipment on the panel. So that's really the main benefit for the high voltage. But the other ancillary benefit is when you're doing high voltage, you're using thinner copper wires, you're generating less heat. It's not a whole lot of excess heat, but you're paying for that heat. You're using more electricity, even though it's not a ton, but then you're also using more electricity to cool it because of that extra heat. And then, you know, it and it and that can generate more heat somewhere, which is inefficient. So the highest voltage that you can use is always recommended. And, you know, it does cost to put in a high voltage panel, you know, if you're doing 480. But where I think it's really important is when people are looking for a location and they're looking at one warehouse and they can only go to 240, and there's another warehouse and they've got a high voltage panel at 480. And there may be reasons why they would want to go to one or the other, but I can tell you right now, if you can get into that warehouse that has the high voltage panel, you're gonna have a lot more freedom when it comes to selecting the equipment that you can use. Last thing you want to do is have this huge warehouse, but you can't put anything in it because your panel's too small, and then upgrading the panel costs a couple hundred thousand and you don't have the money until you make your first flip.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Final questions I want to ask you, or just like I'm gonna be like, okay, so you know, we we talked a lot about efficiency, yield, how to do a commercial grow setup, you know. Off the top of your head, are there any more things that boost yield that are just stuff that that growers typically miss? Are there any more things that save money that maybe growers aren't potentially thinking about that we haven't talked about yet?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest ones is it has to do with the rhizosphere. So the rhizosphere is the root zone of the plant. And there's been a trend that's been happening for the last decade where people are going towards when they when they fertigate, when they when they feed the plants the nutrients, they're using salts. And they're just using straight salts. And you know, there's a company that shall remain nameless that got everyone to use hypochlorous acid to clean the the lines in their system and to and it also will somewhat sterilize the root zone. But what you're doing there is you're getting rid of all the beneficial microbes in that root zone, and that is a horrible thing to do. It's kind of like if we were to get rid of all the beneficial microbes in our gut. And if you do that, you're gonna be in a world of hurt. You're not gonna digest your food properly, you're gonna become nutrient deficient, it'll affect your mood because in humans, neurotransmitters are made there. Well, plants require a very complex consortia of microorganisms in the root zone so that they can absorb all the nutrients and they can also fight off any pathogenic bacteria. So the beneficial ones will occupy that space and keep the bad bugs out. And it also helps with their immune system and very key, it helps with cannabinoid production, terpene production, any secondary metabolites are going to be boosted by these inoculants in the root zone. And it'll also help your shelf life because of those same reasons. So I've gone into countless, really countless commercial farms where they've switched over to using salt and hypochlorous acid, and I've seen beautiful flowers. But you go in there and you rub them, and you just can't smell anything. I mean, one time I thought I had COVID because I couldn't, it looked so good, but there was no flavor. And I talked to the guy, and I was working for a biostimulant company at the time, and I gave him some inoculants and a couple other biostimulants, and he called me back and he was blown away. He's like, I I used one mil once a week, one mil per gallon once a week of this inoculant, and now all the flavor came back. Everything is perfect again. And so it doesn't take a lot, but you know, you can even use hypochlorous acid with the inoculations, but you're kind of fighting yourself. I recommend using a non-sterilizing line cleaner like drip clean, house and garden drip clean, something similar to that, and then inoculating with a really high-quality inoculant. And there's a lot out there. Call us, I'll talk to you about them. But we've got to get away from that sterile system idea. It's not good in so many different ways.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Cool, cool. Well, that's an enormous amount of information and super helpful. Yeah, because yeah, we we have had customers reach out, I know, asking, trying to buy barrels and barrels of hyperchlorous acid. So glad you're here to help them out. Um, is there anything else you wanted to comment on just when it comes to efficiency, any any other value you can share?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Well, I mean, I think the biggest thing is to remain humble. I mean, you know, you you provided an amazing introduction to me, James, but I am a very humble person and I'm always looking to learn and I'm looking to help other people learn as well. And so instead of, you know, trying to guess it, you're in the middle of the night, you're Googling everything, you're asking Chat GPT all these questions, give us a ring. That's what my job is. My job is to help you guys make the most efficient use of your space and your time and to provide a lot of information so you can make you know the best decisions that you can. Call us early on in the process before you go down a road where you may have wasted money or just wasted a lot of time or lost a harvest to powdery mildew or whatnot. You know, call us first, please. Be happy to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, and I can I can basically verify that. Elliot is an extremely generous person on the phone. You know, he's he's the head of our commercial division, but every now and then he'll get on a phone with somebody. He's just a hobbyist grower or someone who just has questions and and he'll spend 20, 30 minutes on them helping him, helping them out. So give us a call. If you've got any questions, we're happy to help you out, and that's what we're here for. So on the next episode, I think we'll probably touch on dehumidifiers a little bit deeper. I think that's so fascinating. Everything that you talked about here. We sell a lot of de hues, we know a lot about them, and we can definitely help you guys optimize that. So keep an eye out for episode number two of the Elliott and James remix. Okay. So thank you guys so much. Take care. Thanks, Jane.