The Spot is one of Southern Colorado’s earliest recreational cultivation facilities. Their boutique-style facility houses 430 plants under 20,000 sq ft of roof, and emphasizes utmost importance on quality. VP and Chief Operating Officer, Dave Munn proclaims, “We’ve been doing this since recreational was legal, and were one of the first to have a recreational license in Colorado. Quality is everything for us, so the ability to produce consistently is of the highest importance.”
Problems due to hot climate
Cultivation at The Spot used to be lit solely by HPS lighting, but due to climate fluctuations, their growers were running into critical problems. “It’s common in our region for ambient temperatures to reach triple digits, and when this happened, our rooms would get hotter than our HVAC system could handle.” says Dave Munn. “We were looking into how to keep this crippling heat from damaging our crops, but the HVAC companies were looking to charge $400,000 to $800,000 to retrofit our system correctly.”
Dave further notes that, “I think this is a problem that everyone is struggling with to some degree. In many cases, HVAC systems aren’t designed for indoor grows when you consider the climates that growers have set up their operations.”
Solving heat loads and HVAC requirements
“We came to LumiGrow seeking a solution for our heat load problem. We knew that LEDs ran over 50% cooler than HPS, but we wanted to explore how performance matched up.” explains Dave Munn. “Immediately we’ve seen that the low heat load is even more dramatic than expected. This week we’ve seen over 102 degree Fahrenheit ambient temperatures, but we’re keeping our grow rooms at 76 degrees. Impressively enough, the HVAC is finally cycling on-and-off letting us know that we’re not even pushing full capacity yet! When lighting with HPS, our HVAC never cycled off even with lower outside temperatures than we’re seeing with this current heat wave.”
The Spot is currently running 28 LumiGrow LED lamps under 7 tons of AC and have kept from having to upgrade their HVAC. “Someone who’s engineering a building could certainly lower the cost of buildout by starting with LEDs, and getting all of the ancillary benefits out of the gate.” informs Dave.
Crop benefits with LEDs in flower
When previously growing with HPS, Growers at The Spot were seeing their plants get shocked when moving from vegetative to flower rooms. “Back in the old days we had to compensate for this crop stress by adjusting our lighting for the first week of flower, but now with LumiGrow LEDs we haven’t seen any crop stress when turning rooms and can keep lighting strategies consistent. Only three weeks into flower and we’re already seeing spacing of the nodes are 2x denser under LEDs than HPS, and our crops’ leaves are dark and emerald in color with astounding uniformity. We believe that the spectrum of the LEDs and low ambient temperatures are keeping the plants growing healthy.” says Dave Munn.
50% rebate for choosing efficiency
The Spot continues to save by receiving a 45% to 50% rebate on the cost of their LumiGrow fixtures by choosing an energy-efficient solution. “I would encourage anyone considering LumiGrow lighting to contact LumiGrow, contact your utility, and see if you’re eligible for a rebate. Getting paid 50% back and seeing higher performance than our previous industry-standard HPS lights is really an easy choice. Catching up to modern times really has lots of benefits, it just takes a little research and a quick call to get setup.” recommends Dave.
For more information:
LumiGrow
800-514-0487
info@lumigrow.com
www.lumigrow.com
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