HVAC For Cannabis: Critical Factors

Airflow is one of the most difficult aspects of indoor cannabis cultivation to predict and plan for, mainly because of the fact that there are many complications one must take into consideration, especially when it comes to fulfilling the optimal conditions to grow cannabis.

When planning to get a grow room made to plant cannabis, many factors must be taken into consideration, one of which is making sure that there is sufficient airflow throughout the room.

There are many reasons why a grow room can have insufficient air flow, including spatial constraints preventing the right fan from fitting, obstacles such as grow lights and equipment supports or stratified air that entraps warm, humid air at the plant canopy.
These issues are amplified when a multi-tier plant racking is utilized, but with proper grow room engineering, these issues can be resolved before the first plants move into the room.

Why Is Commercial HVAC Important To Grow Cannabis?

Before understanding exactly why the presence of a commercial HVAC system is so vital to growing cannabis, let us first understand what grow rooms are.

When growing any sort of cannabis-related product, it is necessary to provide them with a climate-controlled environment.
In order to do so, there are custom rooms built to make sure that the climate conditions are optimal for cannabis growth to guarantee high yields when it comes to specific types of cannabis strains.

These custom-designed rooms are called controlled environment agriculture grow rooms and are sealed greenhouses, modular panel rooms, or traditional stick framing construction within a warehouse, that use artificial lighting devices to stimulate growth efficiently.

The main reason why commercial HVAC systems are used in grow rooms is because of the fact that the environment that these plants need to grow in must be incredibly warm (68F to 86F) and humid (40% Relative Humidity to 80% RH). Conventional HVAC systems are not capable of achieving such an environment.

This is primarily due to the fact that traditional HVAC systems are not capable of effectively controlling and balancing the airflow, which is a vital contribution to the overall growth process of cannabis plants.

Grow Room HVAC System Factors

As discussed earlier, a commercial HVAC system is a necessity for grow rooms to get the maximum crop yield from the cannabis plants.
Considering this information, let us discuss some of the factors you should look out for when researching the market for a great commercial HVAC system.

Temperature

When growing cannabis, the overall temperature of the room is essential to ensure the healthiest plant development possible.
In order to achieve the optimal temperature needed for your grow room, it is vital to make sure that the HVAC system you are looking to get can reach the required temperature and that the temperature control is efficient enough to keep the room consistently maintained at that temperature.

Temperature control is necessary because if the temperature stays irregular for an extended period of time, the crops may get stressed, resulting in decreased yields and poor quality.

Humidity

One of the biggest obstacles in the way to achieving maximum cannabis crop yield is making sure that your specialized HVAC system can effectively control humidity.

As the cannabis plants begin to grow, they start to produce and release water, and the resulting moisture must be removed from the grow room so that it does not become too humid.

One thing the remember is the higher the temperature in the room, the lower the relative humidity. Often times temp and humidity are factors that tend to be a manageable tradeoff depending on the cycle your crop is in.

Vertical Farming and Tiered Systems

The advancement of technology has affected a number of different industries, and these innovations have also introduced newer, more efficient techniques.

One of these is the vertical farming method, which is a newly introduced cultivation technique that has solved quite a few problems for farmers.

Vertical farming primarily involves stacking crops on multiple tiers of vertically stacked crops for production, which are fitted into the grow rooms.

The primary reason why many people opt to adopt this cultivation method is to maximize crop yields while farming in a limited space such as a greenhouse.

Speaking of farming in a limited space, one of the main selling points of vertical farming is that it allows you to essentially double your crop yield due to the tiered system you can take advantage of.

Let us discuss in a bit more detail, and talk about the tiered system, what they entail, and what considerations must be taken into account when farming using a tiered system.

A Look Into Tiered Systems

With multi-tier systems, the considerations change to ensure that the lower tier is moving heat off of the lights and plants.
There is a wide array of different canopy air flow fans to achieve this to prevent heat from the lights from being trapped under the second tier.

When considering a single tier, the goal is the same but often accomplished in a different way because you aren’t constrained with another layer of the canopy above your first. Traditionally single, tier flower rooms often use oscillating to move heat. With experience gained over the last decade, you can find that a homogenous environment is more effectively achieved through ceiling-suspended destratification fans. This is because it truly mixes all the air rather than creating a horizontal layer of air, essentially locking the heat in the canopy.

In addition to that, there are a lot of different issues when dealing with multi-tiered systems as well. The most common issue with multi-tier grows is that the plants grow to a size that blocks conventional air movement from moving freely. This gives the Easy Root’s Cross Flow fans an a significant purpose in moving the heat off of the plants.

This is also why it is much more common to use a multi-tier system for Veg and Clone rooms, as they do not grow to the size that full-sized plants do.

Wrap-up

Maximizing yield per square foot of canopy has the industry looking to cutting-edge technology for a solution.
This is why more cannabis professionals are looking to Easy Roots for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to determine how to maximize yield potential in a room while maintaining proper airflow within their grow room. Easy Root’s CFD analysis is done before any equipment is placed in the room.

It allows engineers to analyze and identify potential dead spots to improve your grow space before any equipment is put in the room and is done for a fraction of the cost that it would take to add or change equipment from your room after the construction process.