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Grams per man hour?

_Dude

Member
Would seem to be a good measure of a garden's productivity, no? With maybe a way to factor in material costs?
 
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LiLWaynE

I Feel Good
ICMag Donor
Veteran
i have always thought about this topic... (good thread idea _Dude)

there are TONS of man hours involved in setting up the environment..not so many once the environment is SET..

I wonder if anyone has ever tracked how much time they spend/spent on a operation.

anyone?
 

Tony Danza

Member
Ive done a rough estimate of my time spent in the garden and came to the conclusion that if I just spent the hours at work, I could just buy the weed, however, the weed wouldn't be as good, dry spells happen, and I like growing/hate working.

I think putting a dollar value on your time would allow you to combine all factors in a common unit. Equipment costs money, Watts cost money, rent costs money, and time can be traded for money/money traded for time. These factors could yield you either a grams/dollar or a grams/manhour. It would be a much more accurate measure than g/w, although much more of a pia, with factors such as a 250 dollar light that, every grow, costs you less and less until you buy a new one, only you don't know what the lifespan with be so you would have to correct every grow for (depreciation?) I think. You would need an accountant.
 
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P

PonicalChillin

nice post - it really does matter - to me anyways as I have very little time.

heres my forumula for mucho weed with little time spent.
- ebb&gro buckets & lucas formula
- fill 55 gallon drum with lucas formula and walk away.

note - this method will come back to bite you in your ass should one of your pumps fail or become airlocked. 2 fill pumps / 2 drain pumps - redudancy is key!
 

facelift

This is the money you could be saving if you grow
Veteran
Okay. My box/cabinet was built several year ago and I'm not factoring that in to the cost in labor for this current grow. It took me 45 minutes to fill the container with dirt and plant the seeds. 10 minutes to arrange then 10 containers 30 minutes to hang the lights and 5 minutes to water.


Set up: 90 minutes
Watering: 240 minutes
Set up second cabinet 90 minutes
Upgrade flower box 60 minutes
Shopping 60 minutes
Adjustments 60 minutes

So my total time spend on my current grow with is a perpetual grow to date which has been 21 days veg and 34 day flower comes to 600 minutes or 10 hours. I still have about 30 days of watering and 14 days of adjustments and 1 day of starting another group of plants before the first group is harvested.

Time spent harvest is maybe 30 minutes. Trimming 180 minutes. 30 minutes for hang time. Cutting buds from main stem 45 minutes 15 minutes for jarring. Once in the jars, I'll have to open and air out the buds for 15 minutes per day for 3 weeks. Given all these numbers, actual and estimated. I can estimate how many hours I'll spent working the garden.

Estimated Hours:

10 Hours grow
10 Hours Harvest/Curing

Total: 20 Hours

My estimated harvest for now is 4 ounces and I will still have plants a few weeks from harvest and some plants in veg.
 
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raygun

Active member
You don't put a price on hours you spend at a hobby. However if you were growing for a co-op and it was a business then man hours spent attending the grow need to be equated in. Honestly there are not many things that I would rather be doing as part of a routine and I don't consider it work so I can not put a price on it.
I probably spend way more time than I need to with the ladies anyways.

Smoking my own grown is a priceless thing.
 

Tony Danza

Member
So I crunched some numbers and over the first year of my setup:

Avg 4 oz per 70 days=20 oz or 584 grams this year

20 min/day + 4hrs/month=170 hours/year

I invested $1500 equipment and $220 for power=$1720

So 584 grams for 170 hours ($5950) and 1720 dollars (49 hours)

Considering I bill time at $35 an hour I got: 2.6g/hr or $13.13 per gram, which is more than I can buy weed for.

But that was a startup year, now that I'm more dialed and genetically established, I pull more like 7 oz every 70 days or 1022 grams per year which gets me 4.6g/hr or $7.50 per gram--much better.

But I just finished an expansion that should yeild much more weed for only slightly more effort:

17oz per 75 days=2316 grams

25 min/day + 5 hours/month=272 hours ($9520)

carry over $750 equip (from first year)+ $500 more equip + $420 power=$1670 (47 hours)

so 2316g/(272+47)=7.2g/hr
and (9520+1670)/2316=$4.83/gram

and, at $10/gram, my time spent in the garden (or at work earning money to pay for the garden) would yield me $72.60/hr (if I sold the weed, which I don't.)

The flaws in this calculation are the hourly rate which changes person to person, If I only made $10 an hour at my job, my gardening would appear more worthwhile money wise, but not time wise. That factor aside, It's a way more telling formula than g/w.

And I do realize placing such hard values on a hobby is somewhat crass, but when the Old Lady wants to know why you spend so much time in the garden (growing weed that she smokes), it's nice to be able to put a tangible value on it.
 
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DocLeaf

procreationist
ICMag Donor
Veteran
In commercial grow rooms the majority of hours are consumed by re-potting and harvesting.
 

Tony Danza

Member
littlebud said:
when my spot was running it cost me one hr. a day maintenance...and 6hrs-10hrs per month trimming...3/4 pound to 1 pound a month perpetual grow...60 bucks a year on nutrients

That grow would get me $3.46/g or 10.1g/hr. The bigger the better for this equation. Imagine what out door growers get...$.50/g and 70g/hr?
 

green_grow

Active member
Veteran
grams/man-hour isn't really an accurate way to measure productivity. a highly automated system would produce ounces, if not pounds, per man hour.

the best way to measure productivity would be the way every other venture does it ... COST per gram (or ounce, or pound). since calculating this would require much effort, and zero payoff (other than curiosity satisfied), i would never bother. you would have to factor in time and cost spent on driving for supplies, portion of rent or mortage that goes to the grow space, time spent on computer reading up on the hobby/business, power usage, water usage, portion of property taxes attributed to the grow space, heating, cooling, your own labor, pots, garden tools, fertiliser ... it goes on and on and on.
 

GMT

The Tri Guy
Veteran
lol, you're all forgetting one more time consuming practice, logging onto icmag to discuss it all :)
 

_Dude

Member
green_grow said:
grams/man-hour isn't really an accurate way to measure productivity. a highly automated system would produce ounces, if not pounds, per man hour.
LOL, you think that's a flaw?

the best way to measure productivity would be the way every other venture does it ... COST per gram (or ounce, or pound).
Agreed, but how do you put a value on your labor then? National average or something?

Food for thought, at some point labor will become the limiting factor in every grow that seeks to expand to its limits.
 
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badugi

I like green_grow's way.

I didn't really keep track of the amount of time I spent on my last room build but it was "a lot", including all the multiple repeated trips to Home Depot for things like a couple of screws and other random parts.

Once the room's up and running though, only little time needs to be spent daily, especially after the stretch is over.
 
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Tony Danza

Member
green_grow said:
grams/man-hour isn't really an accurate way to measure productivity. a highly automated system would produce ounces, if not pounds, per man hour.

the best way to measure productivity would be the way every other venture does it ... COST per gram (or ounce, or pound). since calculating this would require much effort, and zero payoff (other than curiosity satisfied), i would never bother. you would have to factor in time and cost spent on driving for supplies, portion of rent or mortage that goes to the grow space, time spent on computer reading up on the hobby/business, power usage, water usage, portion of property taxes attributed to the grow space, heating, cooling, your own labor, pots, garden tools, fertiliser ... it goes on and on and on.

Pretty much everyone who works has a price on their time, so measuring cost is the same as measuring time.

Also, if every other venture measures productivity in terms of cost, it would seem there was some value to it, why would growing weed be different. If you don't know where you are spending your time/money, how can you learn to do it more efficiently. This is doubly true for a commercial grow, I mean, who would grow weed for money without knowing how much they are truly making.

And I would think that any grow that could do a pound per man-hour would take a few hundred hours to set up. And trimming those pounds would take some time as well.
 
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badugi

That theory doesn't work so well in practice, though. Seems to me most people doing large enough grows to support themselves are first running out of other resources besides time. A guy doing a 4k grow and no job isn't sitting at that level because he's got no more time to spend on another grow. He's most likely at that level because he has no more power, space, juice, money, balls, greed, or whatever to work with. By your logic, every guy who's putting in 1 hr/day and has an average of 2 free hours per day should easily and automatically be out there making 3x as much. So those types of calculations are completely off and meaningless.

You get what you get. By the time you're ready to do a large enough op that you're worried about time resources, you should already have enough experience under your belt to know pretty well how much of your time that op will take you and how many people it will take for you to run it smoothly. I guess one of those things where if you have to ask.....
 
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green_grow

Active member
Veteran
no, our time does not = our cost. time IS a cost which must be added ON TOP of all other costs. we pay for our energy, floor space, supplies, etc. in dollars, which must be added on top of our own labour costs.

"also if every other venture measures productivity in terms of cost ... why would growing weed be any different." ... exactly, that's what i just said.
 
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badugi

I guess their point is labor generally costs money, time = money, etc. In our world it's really a little different.

As I've tried to illustrate through a longer-than-necessary post above, it's not exactly as if your 2 free hours of time can easily be turned into something productive enough to generate any substantial income to match. If it can, they'd be out doing it and not asking about this type of stuff.

In other fields, it kinda does work that way.
 

LiLWaynE

I Feel Good
ICMag Donor
Veteran
All in all, there aren't too many hobbies out there that have as many benefits as cultivating marijuana....

for example:

There are old ladies who sew with yarn for hours upon hours, only to make blankets and pot holders which they then sell for a buck or two at a craft fair... do they make them for the $$ or for the self assurance that they are providing others with warmth and hand protection?

There are guys who restore old cars for years upon years, logging many tough, back breaking man hours and spending countless amounts of money on parts, only to re-sell the car for a measly profit... SHIT, alot of these guys keep the cars because the car does something for them that nothing else can - supreme satisfaction..


There are people who spend 50 bucks on fantasy football leagues, spend TONS of hours studying, pickup up the right guys, setting up their teams, and watching hours and hours of football for 16 weeks, only to possibly win first place in the league which is on average 400 bux...

whether any of the aforementioned examples of hobby's that I have just thought of are deemed legitimate or not, the point that I am trying to get at is that being involved in the hobby of marijuana cultivation requires very few man hours in retrospect to the value of the benefits and perks of doing so..

Find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life...

:violin:

Stoned to the Bone,

:joint: LW
 
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badugi

Hehe also hard to find another hobby that's easy to be in the black after only 3 months.
 
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