As a massive wave of supply comes online over the next 18 months the battle ground has shifted to end quality results. Fortunately, we have tremendous experience in the drying and curing process to ensure your customers get the product they come to know, time and time again. When looking to design a dry room there are five things to consider;
Yield
If you’re at the point of designing your dry room you’ve already done the math about how many pounds of product you’ll be expecting to pull out of each room. Based on this “dry weight” a general rule of thumb is that your “dry weight” will be around 20% of your total weight. Ex. 20lbs dry= 80lbs wet for a total of 100lbs. So based on the “dry weight” we can calculate how much “wet weight” there will be and select a system designed to remove that much moisture out of the environment over a 7-10 day period. Once we have the estimated amount of product required to be stored, along with the size of unit required we can start to design the room in which to house everything.
Room
Ideally, we would like to have a non exterior walled room with high insulation value in both the walls and ceiling. Other than for building code compliance purposes we don’t want any exhaust to the outdoors or additional oscillating fans inside the room. We want a stable space in which to roll out a proper environmental control system. Room size should be generally determined by the amount of product that will be curing at any given time. Generally speaking rooms at least 10’ wide by 10’-20’ long are capable of housing up to several hundred dry pounds. If you have more product than this at one time, going with multiple rooms may be beneficial to ensure the process goes smoothly and is more manageable.
Product
More often than not most product is either hang dried and/or rack dried. We’ve recently seen a massive influx of stainless steel bakers racks added to the process and although they “can” be effective the density and cost are significant factors that must be considered. Depending on the size profile of the product drying larger nuggets densely packed run a significantly higher risk of moulding without sufficient airflow throughout the rack where as smaller nuggets are far less prone to this issue when densely packed. Much along the same lines when product is hang dried density and airflow are absolutely critical to your overall success. Depending on the size of each stock, size of bud etc.. you will need to continue to dial in the exact ratio over experience in your space. We have several different designs that we have found to work very well for the different mounting methods of the product, from top to bottom airflow or wall to center airflow, we can design it specific to your desired space.
Airflow
This is by far the most critical step in the design of the room as there are so many variables that can make or break the end quality of the product. Selecting and installing a general airflow system is simple enough, but without ensuring that the environment it’s creating is actually flowing equally and evenly throughout the whole room, the process and outcome are fundamentally flawed. Therefore, airflow design is one of the most underrated, underappreciated aspects of grow room planning in most facilities.
Even airflow is incredibly important because your clients are always looking to purchase a consistently cured product not one where half is over dry and the other half is under dried. This typically happens when high velocity direct airflow hits certain parts of the room causing that section to over dry where other parts are under-dried. This can be avoided by planning airflow specific to your drying method (racks, hang, etc..) and having the properly designed system in place. When we design all of our dry rooms we take all the different variables in consideration and dial in a recommendation specific to your requirements.
The general rule of thumb when planning airflow is to eliminate high velocity airstream directly on the product, move the air from high to low and have a high CFM transfer rate. Other factors to consider is ease of use as some of our systems require at least 1’ off of all the walls to be open to allow for air to channel down which can be easily accomplished with moveable bakers racks but must be planned if using stationary shelving. It’s by far the most critical step in the planning process and cannot be overlooked.
Stages
You want to slowly and consistently remove moisture over a 3-7 day period with the last few days ever so slightly bringing the product to finish. We’ve seen some processes go as long as 28 days extending the curing portion 14+ days for very exact profile conditions, reducing any large variances in potency, look and taste. It’s important that once the process has started to never introduce another rooms wet product beyond the first day or two as humidity will spike leaving the older product wetter longer, dramatically increasing the chances of mold.
Where the standard metric of success in the industry was based on total yield it has shifted to consistent quality. As many producers have come online customers loyalty to a specific brand is now defined by quality and consistency they've come to know. Much like a favourite coffee shop, you go there with a certain expectation as you’ve had it 100 times before and you still want it to be the same the 101st time. Brands are now built on their final result and so we’re seeing a lot of effort going into the final stage of the production cycle before it goes to the end customer.
Did you know we offer free consulting and 3D room designs? Check out www.excelairsystems.com/snapshot or call us at 1-877-728-0757.