Building a detached Shop/garage Grow 40 X 60? 55k Budget

Marc Maron · Dec 28, 2016

Hey! Thanks for stopping by to assist me in this brain-boggling journey

I have about 4 years experience of growing cannabis. Had two 4000 watt flower rooms and everything has been nice.

But now since I have moved I need to get back to growing and not only that...It's time for HYDROPONIC!

So the numbers...

I have right around $55,000 to :

1. Put in a foundation
2. Going to be building the Detached Garage mostly by myself
3. Upgrade the electrical panel to 200 amps.
4. AC Units
5. Lights
6. Hydro etc

What I need to figure out: (Besides the meaning of life)

A. What size of shop to build(That's what she said)
B. List of everything I'll be needing to purchase
C. Design of the setup
D. What type of hydroponic system. I well water so water is a nonissue.

The Pretty kinda sure must have list:

Sealed Rooms

12 FT ceilings

2 Flower rooms 20 x 20 10,000 watts each

Floor drains

Non Air-cooled lights
Co2
and of course sanity

At this time (12/28/2016) I would like to build a 40 x 60 shop.

Probably would only use one flower room right off the bat and wait until I have more funds to expand.

I have to do this right. This is everything I have, arms weak mom's spaghetti.

queequeg152 · Dec 28, 2016

lol thats 20 square foot?

unless do you everything yourself, it will be hard to approach that.

your slab alone will cost like 12-20 grand easily.

20 a square foot is basically pole barn territory.

elios · Dec 28, 2016

That's cool, fantastic idea.

Tynehead Tom · Dec 28, 2016

my newly built shop is 18 x 30 outside , so that's the foundation/slab size. Fully wired, insulated and natural gas furnace installed , the receipts come to 33,470.00 and the guy I bought the house from did everything but the concrete, roof and electrical. Bearing in mind, that's Canadian loonies. I imagine a 40x60 would be well over double that cost at least and we have not even gotten to the grow room stuff yet.

Marc Maron · Dec 28, 2016

queequeg152 said:
lol thats 20 square foot?

unless do you everything yourself, it will be hard to approach that.

your slab alone will cost like 12-20 grand easily.

20 a square foot is basically pole barn territory.

I'm planning on doing the majority of the work myself. i might just make life easier and make it a 24' x 60'

Can always build another shop or an attached garage later on to my house.

I just want to do this right the first time around

Marc Maron · Dec 28, 2016

elios said:
That's cool, fantastic idea.

Thanks

I've been thinking about this idea for awhile. I had to give my brain a break and ask the professionals for input :dance013:

Marc Maron · Dec 28, 2016

Tynehead Tom said:
my newly built shop is 18 x 30 outside , so that's the foundation/slab size. Fully wired, insulated and natural gas furnace installed , the receipts come to 33,470.00 and the guy I bought the house from did everything but the concrete, roof and electrical. Bearing in mind, that's Canadian loonies. I imagine a 40x60 would be well over double that cost at least and we have not even gotten to the grow room stuff yet.

Damn that sounds nice! Guess I needed to chill my jets and redesign it

24 x 40

Tynehead Tom · Dec 28, 2016

ya man, I'm glad this place came with the shop it did. I literally "just" moved in by Christmas LOL
I figure I have a minimum 15K bill ahead of me still to add walls and section off my grow areas and equip each room for each required environment. I'm going to add an additional 16 feet to the length for a covered parking area, just post and beam and metal roof.

It's cool you have a healthy budget and what appears to be a realistically open mind hehehe Can't wait to see what you come up with and hope to be around to see when the first plants go in.
Good Luck!!

Marc Maron · Dec 29, 2016

Tynehead Tom said:
ya man, I'm glad this place came with the shop it did. I literally "just" moved in by Christmas LOL
I figure I have a minimum 15K bill ahead of me still to add walls and section off my grow areas and equip each room for each required environment. I'm going to add an additional 16 feet to the length for a covered parking area, just post and beam and metal roof.

It's cool you have a healthy budget and what appears to be a realistically open mind hehehe Can't wait to see what you come up with and hope to be around to see when the first plants go in.
Good Luck!!

Congrats on the new place!!

Yeah, I've been saving for last few years. Finally have my car paid off, no girlfriend, and all the freedom to invest on my love of growing.

My plan is to have all this setup by the 2nd week of March. Just due to the temperature for the concrete.

Meanwhile... I'll be fixing my attached shed to veg my plants for now. Might sacrifice a bedroom in the mean time.

sheik_yerbouti · Dec 29, 2016

Marc Maron said:
Congrats on the new place!!

Yeah, I've been saving for last few years. Finally have my car paid off, no girlfriend, and all the freedom to invest on my love of growing.

My plan is to have all this setup by the 2nd week of March. Just due to the temperature for the concrete.

Meanwhile... I'll be fixing my attached shed to veg my plants for now. Might sacrifice a bedroom in the mean time.

Can you get a loan at all for some of the building costs?

For a 30,000ish watt grow I'd guess you'd need 20-30k just for equipment and set up

Chunkypigs · Dec 29, 2016

Get your room sizes figured out first.
20 x 20 is huge for only 10kw of lights.
You need 12ft ceilings?

Speed of green · Dec 29, 2016

i fit 28 lights in my three car garage, its 20x30 after framing the rooms ac's and all the odds and ends came to about $26k thats doing all the labor myself. add the cost of a slab and a steel building around it and you are probably looking double.

A smaller building might be more realistic unless you want a 40x60 tent on a slab. https://nlfabric.wordpress.com/2015...rage-buildings-mn-nd-sd-ne-ks-ok-co-ia-il-wi/

a 1000w DE fixture covers a 5x5' area, thats 25sf per lamp.

A 5 ton ac can cool 12 - 1000w DE lamps in a sealed environment.

for maximum efficiency these rooms should be 12k rooms with a 5ton ac Measuring a minimum of 15x20 take advantage of the overlapping light. you wouldn't want two long rows of six because you are wasting light. This room would need additional space for walkways.

because of the 5x5 footprint on these lights using 4x8 flood tables is a waste. if you want to do a true hydro system you would be building custom flood trays or bucket systems, whatever you please.

Soilless medium like coco would be much less expensive to startup and still has all the advantages of hydro, drip to waste coco has been proven a very effective method, i would recommend looking into this.

lining the floor with EPDM, setting up the lights, setting up the ac, coco with a drip system, a trellising system, a big dehumidifier, a framed and sealed room, around 100 amps per room, a carbon filter, oscillating fans, pumps, timers, meters, are all the hurdles you have to jump.

Marc Maron · Dec 29, 2016

sheik_yerbouti said:
Can you get a loan at all for some of the building costs?

For a 30,000ish watt grow I'd guess you'd need 20-30k just for equipment and set up

Might have more money to spend by the time this is going to be built. I honestly well have 80k to spend. But I only wanted to spend about 55k on the building itself.

Chunkypigs said:
Get your room sizes figured out first.
20 x 20 is huge for only 10kw of lights.
You need 12ft ceilings?

You are correct! But now the room in question is going to be 12 x 20. I would like to have more space than I need...just because it's easier to add lights than to build again

I might move to 10ft ceilings :tiphat:

Chunkypigs · Dec 29, 2016

Marc Maron said:
....You are correct! But now the room in question is going to be 12 x 20. I would like to have more space than I need...just because it's easier to add lights than to build again

I might move to 10ft ceilings

you might just want to consider how you are going to set 40 foot trusses on top of 12' walls "mostly by yourself".

get some help designing your flowering rooms before you start a project twice as big as what you need.

can you afford all the oversize equipment you will need to cool and dehumidify your high ceiling bigger than you need space properly on that budget?

it doesn't seem like you have considered the cost of insulation for a building that size either.

HarvestMoon303 · Dec 29, 2016

I would make sure that you can use the space for "something else" in the future. I can't imagine dropping $55k+ on a grow spot, unless it was a legal dispo with some investors. Big room are much more challenging than small rooms in a multitude of ways.

I would use some type of CMH fixtures, without a doubt. Changing 20x40ft of HPS bulbs alone would make me go broke. CMH will last at least twice as long for roughly the same price, at a lower power than the hps, and with less need for environmental controls (AC).

Marc Maron · Dec 29, 2016

Chunkypigs said:
you might just want to consider how you are going to set 40 foot trusses on top of 12' walls "mostly by yourself".

get some help designing your flowering rooms before you start a project twice as big as what you need.

can you afford all the oversize equipment you will need to cool and dehumidify your high ceiling bigger than you need space properly on that budget?

it doesn't seem like you have considered the cost of insulation for a building that size either.

I have no problem asking/paying someone to helping me build this. This is more of a rough draft of what I would like to do

My complete budget for EVERYTHING is going to be 90k. Just got word from the bank

so....It looks like I need to change the title to this thread :dance013:

HarvestMoon303 said:
I would make sure that you can use the space for "something else" in the future. I can't imagine dropping $55k+ on a grow spot, unless it was a legal dispo with some investors. Big room are much more challenging than small rooms in a multitude of ways.

I would use some type of CMH fixtures, without a doubt. Changing 20x40ft of HPS bulbs alone would make me go broke. CMH will last at least twice as long for roughly the same price, at a lower power than the hps, and with less need for environmental controls (AC).

I appreciate the input. I don't want to cheap out on anything on this process. Without a doubt this is going to be a commercial grow.

Without getting ahead of myself....I imagine in the future I'll be using LEDS. But, That would be a couple rounds of harvest down the road....Look now I'm look way far ahead haha

Solar panels

Lazyman · Dec 30, 2016

Hey bud, throwing in my $.02 here.

Most steel buildings in that size range run about 30 to 35k. The cost of the slab/foundation is usually pretty close to the cost of the building, so you're at 60-70k right away.

Add plumbing, a bathroom, LOTS of electric wiring, you can add another 20k pretty quickly.

For grows, figure $2k per 1kw light. This includes wiring, a grow system (recommend flood and drain trays) and of course, the light itself, and air cooling. 40x60 is 2400 square feet. You need a veg room and two flower rooms, and a drying/trimming space of you don't already have one. Keeping everything under one roof is safer than moving things around.

Fortunately veg space required half the space and lighting as the flower rooms. So if you did a pair of flowering rooms at 20x40 EA, and a veg room of 20x20, you'd have enough room for a 20x20 drying room and some room to work. You need space for reservoirs and walkways, ducting, carbon filters and places to mount oscillating fans. Use at least 1 x 18" oscillating wall fan per 2 lights, no less. Leave room to transplant and move around.

Each flower room could hold around 24 lights, with walkways and trays, maybe a couple more. Light overlap is your friend, have one big flowering room and harvest half of it per month. Never have rooms idle. Unused equipment is wasted money.

You will need massive power to run this op. Your power company will have to engineer your power. You cannot put in a 400 amp panel and expect to pull 400 amps. Not even close. I had to get my own 45kva transformer (the biggest residential one they offer) on my own pole, 10 feet from my 30kw grow, with double drops just to be able to pull 200a. You need at least double that much. This will cost you 20k at least, more if they have to drop you in at 3 phase power, and you go find your own transformer to step it down to do for single phase. More money for your "cool" electrician.

Don't use extension cords, put outlets everywhere, 120v and 240v. Put the 120v on switches so you can turn off chains of oscillating fans quickly, you'll be doing foliar sprays weekly and they all have to be off. Pain in the ass when you have to turn 30 or 40 fans off, and back on later, one at a time.

You'll need more water than you can get from a garden hose. Figure each 2 lights needs 100 gallons of nutrient solution every week. Find your nutes in bulk. Buy your soil or Coco by the pallet, it's cheaper and you'll need a couple pallets a month.

You do have employees to help maintain all this, and trim and transplant, stake and prune, right? It is way too much work for one person.

Lazyman · Dec 30, 2016

Oh and I see you wanted to do a sealed room with CO2. I would advise against it. The amount of AC you'd need to actually cool 48 flowering lights, plus 12 veg lights (use 1k DEs, do the even think of using anything else) is 300,000 BTU. That's 25 tons of cooling, or 5 x 5 ton units. I believe each one would need its own 80a 240v circuit, and draws around 60a each. That's 300 amps pull just for cooling, and your power system would have to allow that, plus the draw of all the lights fans, pumps, reservoir heaters, etc. I would figure with AC you'd be pulling in the neighborhood of 620 to 650 amps @240vac with everything. Probably not doable on residential circuits. If you can though, the cost of the power at .11 per kWh puts you at about $6800 per month in power, give or take a grand. You won't make a nickel for the first 3 months, and you'll need enough nutes and cash to pay your workers (and trimmers) for the first run.

Oh and I saw you're on a well. You will need a much bigger well pump, water softeners, several large RO filters, booster pumps, float valves and tons of tubing. I'd plan on 20k for just the water system. A new well pump in the 2hp range installed will be 4 or 5 k by itself.

mojave green · Dec 30, 2016

Lazyman said:
Hey bud, throwing in my $.02 here.

Most steel buildings in that size range run about 30 to 35k. The cost of the slab/foundation is usually pretty close to the cost of the building, so you're at 60-70k right away.

Add plumbing, a bathroom, LOTS of electric wiring, you can add another 20k pretty quickly.

For grows, figure $2k per 1kw light. This includes wiring, a grow system (recommend flood and drain trays) and of course, the light itself, and air cooling. 40x60 is 2400 square feet. You need a veg room and two flower rooms, and a drying/trimming space of you don't already have one. Keeping everything under one roof is safer than moving things around.

Fortunately veg space required half the space and lighting as the flower rooms. So if you did a pair of flowering rooms at 20x40 EA, and a veg room of 20x20, you'd have enough room for a 20x20 drying room and some room to work. You need space for reservoirs and walkways, ducting, carbon filters and places to mount oscillating fans. Use at least 1 x 18" oscillating wall fan per 2 lights, no less. Leave room to transplant and move around.

Each flower room could hold around 24 lights, with walkways and trays, maybe a couple more. Light overlap is your friend, have one big flowering room and harvest half of it per month. Never have rooms idle. Unused equipment is wasted money.

You will need massive power to run this op. Your power company will have to engineer your power. You cannot put in a 400 amp panel and expect to pull 400 amps. Not even close. I had to get my own 45kva transformer (the biggest residential one they offer) on my own pole, 10 feet from my 30kw grow, with double drops just to be able to pull 200a. You need at least double that much. This will cost you 20k at least, more if they have to drop you in at 3 phase power, and you go find your own transformer to step it down to do for single phase. More money for your "cool" electrician.

Don't use extension cords, put outlets everywhere, 120v and 240v. Put the 120v on switches so you can turn off chains of oscillating fans quickly, you'll be doing foliar sprays weekly and they all have to be off. Pain in the ass when you have to turn 30 or 40 fans off, and back on later, one at a time.

You'll need more water than you can get from a garden hose. Figure each 2 lights needs 100 gallons of nutrient solution every week. Find your nutes in bulk. Buy your soil or Coco by the pallet, it's cheaper and you'll need a couple pallets a month.

You do have employees to help maintain all this, and trim and transplant, stake and prune, right? It is way too much work for one person.

Good estimate.
:tiphat:

But! Foliar spraying once a week? Mandatory? Skip it.

Marc Maron · Dec 30, 2016

Lazyman said:
Hey bud, throwing in my $.02 here.

I'll take all the 2cents I can get

It's not going to be a steel building.

At this point it might be easier to make this an attached garage instead of a detached garage.

That slab estimate for a 40' x 60' X 6" was quoted at 11,000. I would being doing the prep work for it. So let's say 15k to be super conservative.

Let's throw out adding a bathroom..Because if I make this an attached garage I would sacrifice one of my bathrooms for this

I agree I'll have to bring out another transformer. Also, if I make this an attached garage I'll have two open slots to add 60 amp breakers...Or connect it to a sub panel. Either way I'll need another transformer. I'll give a call to the power company to see how much that'll be.

I have two people that I'll have employed on this. But I'll be mainly doing this solo once everything is running. I certainly understand how time consuming growing is. My past grow consisted of two flower rooms of 4000 watts and a veg room of 3600 watts.....Did I mention that was all done in soil

Except for the 180 Botanicare cloner I have.

Even with that said... I gave myself way too much work over my head. I guess I just like doing that to myself. :laughing:

As I can see I'm doing it again..But with hydro

My harvest goals are to get a Trimpro...Still need to do some research on automatic trimmers.

Then make all the final product into BHO....Yes I know another HUGE expense and a bunch of information I need to read before I even start using a Closed loop system.

I can't say how thankful I am for y'all helping me out with this!

Building a detached Shop/garage Grow 40 X 60? 55k Budget

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