Learn how Brandy and the company she co-founded, Surna inc, is on the cutting edge of technology in the cannabis industry.
Who: Brandy Keen Co-Founder of Surna Inc. What: Environments and Profit in Cannabis Cultivation Where: Right here When: Wednesday, January 16th at 11 AM PST
Surna has always been driven by one thingāinnovation. We see problems as opportunities, and we create innovative solutions that efficiently solve our clientsā challenges.
Our deep expertise is not something you can achieve overnight. It requires years of experience. Hundreds of projects. Tens of thousands of hours. Sweat. Failure. Success. Expertise. As the only true expert in cultivation environments, Surna is the first call any cultivator, investor, engineer or cannabis consultant should make when planning and designing a controlled environment cultivation. Weāre the industry experts in applied mechanical engineering, agricultural science, indoor farming and predictive facility modeling.
Our systems produce greater yield, more reliability, more security, and timely ROI. Weāre laser-focused on producing better energy efficiency for you, moving heat out of your environment as practically as possible. As cross-disciplinary experts, we take time to fully understand your business goals, climate conditions and facility before building a system that will meet your business and cultivation goals. As educators and resources, our Project Management, Engineering and Customer Service teams will work hand in hand with your team to ensure that weāre all moving toward the same finish lineābecause we know that we can accomplish so much more together.
We are very much looking forward to todayās AMA. I love the work that Surna does and @brandy.keen is AMAZING! She absolutely demonstrates the very essence of exemplary service to the cannabis industry. Brandy has as many facets to her life and career as a diamond and we all look up to her. This is going to be a great one!
Oh man thatās a long and convoluted story but Iāll try to be brief. I started my career in the semiconductor industry (technical sales) and was exposed obviously to clean rooms and the mechanical systems associated with that unique environment. After 10 years and moving all over the country for my job, I got a little bored and I wanted to return to Austin, TX, where Iām from. I moved in with my now husband in 2003, who was a hobby indoor gardener, and got exposure to the kind of silly ways that folks managed temperature and humidity in controlled environments back then. Together we had a commercial construction company, where he ran the job sites and I managed everything from client relationships and scheduling to payroll to grouting tile, and obviously gained substantial exposure to the practicalities of HVAC in large scale application. Fast forward to 2006 and we had an idea for a radiant barrier covering to make air cooling more energy efficient and effective (remember when everyone ran air cooled reflectors?). We had some contacts at Sunlight Supply and Hydrofarm, they picked up the product, and we were off to the races. In 2007, about 4 months after we got married, my husband had a grand mal seizure and learned from his neurologist that a) he had epilipsy and b) heād been self medicating with cannabis for who knows how long, so our company very quickly went from a way to make money to a labor of love. There was substantial evolution from 2006 to 2011 when cannabis was first legalized in Arizona, and by that time we had a full climate control product line and deployed our first medical cannabis facility climate control system in Arizona in 2011. We relocated to Colorado in 2012, and have evolved so much since those early days of assembling heat exchangers in our garage. Surna is now a mechanical engineering company, providing mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans to the industry in all 50 states and every Canadian province, associated equipment (manufactured by Surna or by our partners in the HVAC space), and commissioning/systems start up, etc. Now, my husband owns a cultivation facility about 5 minutes from our office and I advise clients on their different options and help guide them through the very complicated process of proper mechanical design for cultivation facilities. Since 2006, weāve been involved in almost 800 cultivation facilities so weāve pretty much seen it all.
How often do you go to facilities that have installed improper HVAC systems? We see it all the time down here when May rolls around and new cultivation facility owners scramble to retrofit or upgrade their existing cooling systems in their grows. Do you often have to fix other peoplesā costly HVAC mistakes?
Dive into this weeks AMA that is about to go LIVE
" Ask Me Anything" - Third installment of āWomen in Cannabisā series with Brandy Keen from Surna inc.
Learn about "Environments and Profit in Cannabis Cultivation"
Thank you for your time to host this AMA. I am very interested in an HVAC system, with minimum equipment inside the growing room, a ductless system. I know that mini splits are good options, but I do not believe they could guarantee a constant environmental conditions all across a medium to large size growing room. I appreciate if you could talk about the best solutions to achieve this goal.
It happens ALL. THE. TIME. Iām working on one right now thatās having serious humidity issues AND is using almost 2X the power theyād need if the initial design had been done correctly. So theyāre taking a hit on revenue AND on cost of operation, and are really stuck band-aiding the problem because they canāt afford to shut down and rip everything out. The issue isnāt that engineering firms arenāt good firms, the issue is that this application is just so unique that without substantial experience you just canāt get it right.
Itās amazing how different the HVAC system for a commercial cannabis cultivation facility can be compared to say as commercial office building! I bet you meet ownersā that will try to cut costs by hiring a fly-by-night engineer who has no idea the precision HVAC controls that go into our industryā¦then they come back months later when their rooms are 100Ā°F or their crop is covered with PM!
What do you find are the components most often overlooked when designing commercial cultivation facility HVAC systems?
We really love ductless systems in cannabis cultivation. Thereās an energy efficiency component to a ductless system (moving heat through duct work is very expensive), a biosecurity component to it (itās difficult to sterilize what you canāt see), and a space utilization component (we donāt always have the ceiling space or attic clearance to run large ducting). On the other hand, with traditional refrigerant based cooling, to get a ductless set up you usually sacrifice dehumidification and are forced in large scale application to put dozens (or in some cases hundreds) of small compressors outside. In both cases the electrical costs and installation costs are untenable. When we have clients looking for ductless systems we usually direct them to chilled water. With chilled water we can manipulate fan speeds and water temperatures for dehumidification, we can tie an unlimited number of fan coils to a central chiller plant (which gives us redundancy and the reduction in electrical infrastructure that we canāt get with mini splits), and in environments like yours we can get āfreeā cooling and dehumidification by using dry fluid coolers to maintain a chilled water set point instead of compressors.
Sorry, re-reading your question and on the subject of consistency, youāre right. When we utilize ductless systems we like to do larger fan coils and distribute them equivalently across the space (ceiling mounted when possible) in conjunction with a vertical air strategy to make sure weāre getting a good, homogenous temperature and humidity in the room.
You do so much in your career! What is your favorite part of your work? Is there something that you do professionally that just makes all your work worthwhile? What keeps you going?
Thank you for your reply. I was wondering if you could post some photos of this setup for the matter of visualizing the room set up. I understand if it is not possible.
Happy Wednesday Brandy! Thanks for hosting this AMA! We are very happy to have you and your team here on Growers Network!
A few questions for youā¦
Are cultivators able to monitor and control your systems remotely from almost any device?
Are your units able to tie into proprietary software, that allows the cultivators to write auto-corrects based on outside temperature and moisture readings?
Are your units able to isolate [measures of grow room moisture and pressure] like GPP (grains per pound) and VPD (vapor pressure deficit), allowing cultivators to both advance or retard plant transpiration rates in the garden?
Cheaping out on mechanical systems is honestly the worst decision you can make. The mechanical design impacts EVERY LAYER of your business from a profitability standpoint.
The biggest mistake people make as it relates to design and load calculations is usually not paying sufficient attention to humidity. Sensible (direct heat) loads are a pretty straightforward calculation (watts=heat plus envelope load) and this the bread and butter of most mechanical engineering firms. Calculating humidity loads, and the capacity of the equipment to extract humidity, is a much more challenging calculation because as the facility parameters change, the amount of dehumidification the equipment can extract also changes. In many cases dehumidification is treated as an afterthought, when it should really be the first consideration, and again the inexperienced just donāt understand that right from the jump.
The other big mistake is in energy use. So often we see cannabis facilities treated the same way as office buildings on the mechanical side, and energy code for occupied spaces can actually be counter productive for cannabis spaces. Itās important to understand how to navigate code vs. exceptions to code available in cultivation, and to have an engineer who understands how to properly energy model these facilities to get a clear picture of energy use. A perfect example is in Washington Stateāthere is an energy code requirement that once you get over XX tons of mechanical cooling, you have to use air side economization to cool the facility (instead of relying on mechanical cooling). Makes all the sense in the world for a house or an office building, but when you start factoring in 80% coastal humidity, and CO2 injection, it makes no sense at all for a cannabis facility. So itās super important that your mechanical designer understands these nuances, and how to present the ārightā design to the plan reviewers in the municipality so they understand the application.
Honestly I love the interaction with cultivators and seeing all the different ways that people approach cultivation. It sounds trite, but I love walking away from a meeting knowing that I helped someone solve a problem that felt too big to them. And my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE thing is the long term relationships that Iāve developed in the industry. I joke that when we engage with a client we kind of get marriedāfacility design and construction is such a huge undertaking so we get to know each other really well through the design, installation and start up phase, and I regularly visit clients whose facilities we worked on 7 or 8 years ago. I get pictures of finished product all the time, and it makes me happy every single time. Lastly, knowing that weāre working in an industry that is legitimately helping people and making huge economic contributions makes me feel good about coming to work every day.
[quote=āKareenabis420, post:18, topic:18594ā]
Are cultivators able to monitor and control your systems remotely from almost any device?
Yes. This is more about controls than mechanical design and hardware, but we have everything from simple 24V enable/disable to full ModBus and BacNet interface available on the equipment. What we select from an equipment standpoint is based on the clientās preferred controls contractor and how much or how little they want to be able to see and adjust. But we strongly recommend that at minimum, they monitor and record data that they can access from anywhere.
Are your units able to tie into proprietary software, that allows the cultivators to write auto-corrects based on outside temperature and moisture readings?
Absolutely. Depending on the amount of ventilation the cultivator is doing, the need for adjustments will vary.
Are your units able to isolate [measures of grow room moisture and pressure] like GPP (grains per pound) and VPD (vapor pressure deficit), allowing cultivators to both advance or retard plant transpiration rates in the garden?
We write a controls sequence of operation to achieve the correct VPD (client driven) based on the grains of water present in the space and the capacity of the equipment to remove moisture under the various conditions the cultivator is looking for as part of the mechanical design. The controls system that the cultivator selects is responsible for sensing the conditions in the space and following our mechanical SOO to achieve the desired parameters. Our job is to do the calculations to ensure that the correct parameters can be achieved, and then to work with the controls contractor to ensure that their software is sending the right signal back to the mechanical equipment in response to the conditions.
I started my career in the semiconductor industry (technical sales) and was exposed obviously to clean rooms and the mechanical systems associated with that unique environment. After 10 years and moving all over the country for my job, I got a little bored and I wanted to return to Austin, TX, where Iām from. I moved in with my now husband in 2003, who was a hobby indoor gardener, and got exposure to the kind of silly ways that folks managed temperature and humidity in controlled environments back then. Together we had a commercial construction company, where he ran the job sites and I managed everything from client relationships and scheduling to payroll to grouting tile, and obviously gained substantial exposure to the practicalities of HVAC in large scale application. Fast forward to 2006 and we had an idea for a radiant barrier covering to make air cooling more energy efficient and effective (remember when everyone ran air cooled reflectors?). We had some contacts at Sunlight Supply and Hydrofarm, they picked up the product, and we were off to the races. In 2007, about 4 months after we got married, my husband had a grand mal seizure and learned from his neurologist that a) he had epilipsy and b) heād been self medicating with cannabis for who knows how long, so our company very quickly went from a way to make money to a labor of love. There was substantial evolution from 2006 to 2011 when cannabis was first legalized in Arizona, and by that time we had a full climate control product line and deployed our first medical cannabis facility climate control system in Arizona in 2011. We relocated to Colorado in 2012, and have evolved so much since those early days of assembling heat exchangers in our garage. Surna is now a mechanical engineering company, providing mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans to the industry in all 50 states and every Canadian province, associated equipment (manufactured by Surna or by our partners in the HVAC space), and commissioning/systems start up, etc. Now, my husband owns a cultivation facility about 5 minutes from our office and I advise clients on their different options and help guide them through the very complicated process of proper mechanical design for cultivation facilities. Since 2006, weāve been involved in almost 800 cultivation facilities so weāve pretty much seen it all.
Kareenabis~