Commercial scale buildings, who to expect?

[Centrum]

When people do commercial runs they use warehouses or old factory buildings and such, places that dont look suspicious when running high electric bills / water bills.


Im curious do these places have to have yearly insepctions from the fire marshal or someone along those lines ?
Or is it a guideline thing?

I admire some of the fantastic commercial grows i have seen and just wanted to see if there is any insight people might be willing to share, things some closet growers might not know.

Is there a different procedure for setting up utilities on a busniess scale.

Take care
+rep

 

[Sam the Caveman]

Inspectors, fire marshalls, building code people and maybe a few others depending on what you claim to use the space for.

I have no personal experience in this matter though, I've just read about it.

You would probably have good luck in areas of decline where the space has been available for a while, most everywhere as of now. The landlord would probably be more willing to leave you alone as long as your paying.

 

[dtfsux]

Dont do it. been there, dont that

Any op that is large enough to require a commercial building is going to require additional labor. Not worth it

But if you are hell bent on doing it...........


You will probably have inspections if you get an occupational license. You dont need to have one and can avoid the inspections.

You can put the electric in your name or in a business name (business will require a formal business with tax ID, etc). You will probably have to put down a deposit either way


The hardest part IME was providing a front. If you have 3000+ sq ft of space, and come and go at all sorts of times, have no incoming/outgoing shipments/deliveries, it will be suspicious.

I was running a SOG in my house, with about 11,000 watts flower and veg. While I had a perpetual harvest and harvested every 3 weeks, I am going to average and say I got 15 pounds (thats low, I think it was more like 18) every 2 months. Thats 75-108 pounds every year. Do the math, thats a decent amount of money, and w/o all the hassle.

And that was a SOG, cutting shitloads of clones, lollipopping , and maintaining 15-20 moms. I was till able to do what I wanted, when I wanted. Take the kids to practice, take off for the weekend, etc. If I wasnt Sogging, it would have been that much easier. no matter how hard I tried, I was married to that fucking warehouse

And my electric bill for the grow was around $500, easily hidden in a house


warehouse grows take ALOT of money and resources.


Fuck that, dont do it !!!

 

[Lazyman]

If you don't put it under a business name, in MOST areas inspections will not be needed. I know some guys who do warehouses grows and they have few problems.

Hell I run a 16kw in a basement that requires VERY little maintenance. I'm planning on doing a warehouse later this year that will consist of 2-3 of my 16KW setups, with Blumat auto watering all around.

I have a pair of guys that will work there full time, maintaning a mom room, lots of clones, and trimming up 8KW worth of plants every two weeks. They will be very busy and I'll pay them very well if they do things right.

I'm told commercial power is cheaper (god it better be!) and it will be nice to have industrial scale power and cooling options at my fingertips.

Hopefully once it's all set up I can visit the grow once a week on weekends, or maybe even less. Automation is the only thing that makes large grows more feasible than small ones. Well, that and giant piles of cash to buy all the gear. But cash is easily replaced.

 

[Centrum]

11k and 16k in a house !!!!!!!!! Serious Gonads, unless your legal.

I could never in a million years even if it was a 15 bedroom house run that much without having panic attacks.


I agree with sam, depending on what the space is used for i think will determine if anyone has to come inspect anything.

 

[arrg]

commercial space only if you are legal. Even the cartels stick with houses. They might get their work dropped at a warehouse but within a half hour that stuff is in vans to houses. houses are much more private even as a rental house. When I used to have asmall legit business is a very outta of the way location I would still get random sales people and other visitors all the time, way more then a house.

Remember eminems thread? 30k in the south and that place was outta the way along some old dirt road.

 

[Centrum]

sry lazy must spread rep before i can rep you again.
thanks for the input

 

[Sam the Caveman]

I think it would be safer to have a place out in the country run by a generator.

A mitsubishi 20k diesel generator only burns a gallon an hour and you could easily run 2 10k rooms on a flip flop with plenty of electricity left to run A/C and everything else.

If you had a truck with a 100 gallon tank in the bed (thats not unusual) you could visit as little as 2 times a week to deliver fuel and check on things. For maintenence periods on the generator, you could just rent one to run while you work on the other.

 

[Hovz]

I've always dreamed of just hooking up one of those industrial generators to my truck and just towing it off, you can easily transport diesel in 50 gallon barrels in the back of a truck, the noise would be the biggest give away.

 

[Sam the Caveman]

Noise would depend on a few things, mainly the foliage cover. Around here it grows like a jungle left untamed. Dense foliage would provide a much better sound barrier than say, a desert.

You could build an enclosure for it using sound dampening materials and get it fairly quiet. The engine is small on the mitsubishi, I think it is only 2 cylinders.

 

[Bud Bug]

Friend of mine ran 8 lights in an mezzanine above his shop. Made the room look like a paint/powder coating room. Since it was a car shop you couldn't smell, hear or see anything. The only thing he had to do was watch for the yearly fire inspections.

 

[Vermonster]

ahh the ultimate question i suppose. i would say it is def case by case, but i guess what you can manage to pull off size wise.....i think a pre existing building that has a few years under its belt converted to a new use or a unit in a rental property owned by yourself/friend and leased to some "guy with dread locks"

 

[dtfsux]

Remember eminems thread? 30k in the south and that place was outta the way along some old dirt road.

And you know how he got busted? A disgruntled ex-employee called in!!!

Lazyman is going to triple his grow, but add 2 more employees who are going to work fulltime. Most people dont have 2 people they can trust like that. So is it really worth it, to put out the money, get others involved, for a little more money? You know pound for pound, you are making less money.

All employees see is the money coming in. They don't realize the financial risk for the building, equipment, etc

And if you dont have the employees, then you have to do all the work yourself.

A generator has it own issues. another expensive piece of equipment to buy upfront. How do you expect to get that fuel from the truck to the generator w/o anyone asking what the fuck is going on?


I thought the shit was going to be a cake walk. I had a nice setup, top notch equipment, etc, but always wound up at that place. With almost $200k worth of product on the line, you have to check and make sure everything is on point.

For example, 30K in lighting means alot of water. It would take 2-3 hours to drain reses, and fill back up, mix nutes and PH. All i had to do was open a valve here or there to fill or drain. But it takes a LONG time to fill up 4 300 gallon reses. Flushing was even longer because I would drain, fill with water, run it for 30 minutes, drain, and refill


If I ever grow again, it will be a ONE man op, in a bigger house, NO SOG, probably E&F buckets, or DTW

Seriously, a 10-12k house op can bring in $300k a year. Do that for 1-2 years, you should have enough money to start a LEGIT business

 

[Vermonster]

lets all be real for a minute though, its no more work then a legtimate business (landscaping roofing etc) and is far superior in the pay dept. quite yer whining francis!

 

[Centrum]

Anyone have any links of a House * Not in cali * that is running 10 K and up lights ?

I Dont feel safe pushing a house past 7-8 K runs. 3800 KWH a month would be the max i would push.
Thats around $300 a month where i am.

I would feel more comfortable running two or 3 houses breaking up the wattage and keeping the bills in the $250 - $300 a month range.

 

[SS-]

Yehh I agree with you on that one. Right now I have a place that uses around 125kw a day, and there isn't anything going on illegal. Just a lot of window ac's because it's in a older neighborhood. It's not a big house either. Just 2 1/2 rooms and 1 bathroom. Never once got a knock on the door or a call wondering about the power usage. Shit you get 2 of those going with 8k, once you get it dialed in you should be able to pull 15# a month. That should easily get you over 500k a year. Don't know about you guys but thats more than enough to get live lavishly without too much of a headache.

 

[2Lazy]

Power concerns I just don't recognize. There is always a good excuse. Like, tell them you're starting up your own cupcake company and that you have a couple electric ovens running for like 12 hours a day. Or tell them that you installed a server farm.

I actually think one of the best places to grow right now would be in business building, like a 4 to 5 story in a business park. With all the out of business start ups, leasing some floor space wouldn't be an issue. Nailing down 10,000 sqft, complete with atmosphere control, is cheaper than some might think.

If I had a spare 70K just sitting around I'd give it a go on the 4th floor. Love those mirror tint windows.

 

[bipotato]

If I ever grow again, it will be a ONE man op

I like it.

Seriously, a 10-12k house op can bring in $300k a year. Do that for 1-2 years, you should have enough money to start a LEGIT business

Amen.

 

[st0ne]

The growers dream,

 

[SicKSKills]

see, the biggest advantage to a warehouse style grow, imo is that it offers a person a chance to consolidate all expenses related to growing on a large scale indoors. by that i mean, you can find a large space for relatively low rent, much more so than growing in houses, as well as cheaper utilities, all in a space that is large enough to grow commercially...for example, in todays market, a grower needs to minimize expenses and maximize output in order to stay profitable and be worth ones time and effort.

growing in multiple houses is for the beginners, as they need to build their business with a smaller amount of capital, and this is fine but once youve slaved away a few years running around doin that, youll realize you could have saved yourself a lot of time and money if you could have had all those lights in once place...imagine a 2000 rent on a nice home that you can put 8kw or so in, then having three of those so 6000 a month in rent... you better have a steady stream of cash flow to keep that afloat....all that for 24kw when you could just set up a warehouse for that same 2000 a mo but all in one location with one rent... that right there is worth it and you will need to manage your money well to be successful.

that being said its not something you just hop into, it takes time, experience, and most of all dedication, to setup and manage a larger scale grow and everyone should run atleast a couple 8k rooms first and decide if stepping it up is what they really want to do or just keep it where you are and stay under the radar. its not for everyone and its kind of a life decision, which road do you want to take? good luck