My biggest recommendation is to educate yourself enough to know if you can trust your engineers. They’re there to help you solve problems but often they like to just make new ones to justify their existence (mind you, I am a self loathing engineer lol). Nobody will spend your money exactly like it was their own. Mad props on being self funded!
This is hilarious and spot on. If I had a nickel…
I had a big argument with the engineers two weeks and basically told them I want my facility setup properly but I don’t want to waste any money doing it, I haven’t a bought 2 vehicles in the last 15 years from the same dealer ship as I always shop around.
If there’s two things in great at 1. Saving money
2. Fixing pretty much everything.
I’m commercial lobster Fishman but trade and cannot depend on people to fix things for me, I’m a certified welder, not certified but I did all the wiring and plumbing in my house so that will all come in handy with this project.
Bravo, this is fantastic to hear. Your last step will be someone who is well versed in the industry and can provide insight into a facility layout that will be most conducive to your end goal.
I can tell you from experience, it’s best to start with the fundamentals and stagger in the more detailed components, I.e. get your electrical in (preferably double what your current needs are) and leave plenty of space on your panels for future adjustments. In terms of mechanical, a mechE thats not well versed in cannabis might make some questionable decisions—if you want a cannabis mechE to help guide your MechE it might be cheaper, DM and I’ll provide a good reference.
Usually, the difficulties for conventional mechEs is air treatment in grows and appropriate design of hazardous locations for cannabis extraction. I’ve seen PEs with decades of experience totally botch both, so make sure you spend adequate time reviewing and collaborating with industry experts.
Good luck, if I had the time I’d be gunning for this job—every Canadian I’ve ever worked with has been professional and courteous in a way that is seldom seen in cannabis.
If you checkout the first post there’s a screen shot of the facility layout. So far I’m pretty confident with my team. I’m going to have my hvac design in the next couple days.
Would you keep the community updated?
I’d love to see how it goes!
What are your primary worries as of now besides equipment choice for hydrocarbon?
Well as of right now I have public hearing for the Re zoning tomorrow night and it’s looking good in my favor, I’m 90% sure financing is going to be good but if not I need to find some money until I sell my current company in June. And the worst will be the licensing, in canada you need to have your facility 100% built before you can apply for your license and then that can take anywhere from 3 months to a year. So I have a lot ahead of me but I’m going to make it work one way or the other.
I had a investor that wanted to go 50/50 but I know this will be valuable and I don’t want to give away any equity.
One of the most unreasonably expensive pain in the ass things is the security part of your evidence package. Though I think it’s a fair bit less onerous for micros.
If you want, DM me and I can refer you to the only people I feel that I can recommend in the space. They’ve handled a good number of the smarter operators out there, and they know how to work with the little guys who are on a shoestring budget.
I can also recommend a code consultant for the extraction portion of your build.
pentane or hexane extract, defat with your method of choice(dwell or membrane), FILTER, push it through a falling film, enjoy any texture of extract.
edit: whoops forgot FILTERING
The man the myth the Canadian legend!!
Who do you guys think has the best hydrocarbon system thats pre approved for use in Canada?
The list seems to be fairly slim at the moment
I’ll take any advice/ help I can get. I know for sure the security for a micro is way less strict then a standard lp. We don’t need any fencing, and legally you don’t even need cameras if you don’t want to.
As of last night I got the final approval from the municipality for the re zoning of my property.
This micro license sounds awesome
Well tonight I fired my hvac, architectural and electrical engineers. The only way was there way and didn’t want to listen to anything I wanted, I don’t have time for people that don’t want to work for you. I know it might back up by project a bit but the last week has been mentally draining and I had enough of it.
I’ll find people that actually want to work WITH me.
To quote Louis CK: “no good marriage ever ended in divorce”
Better to fire them now before you get knee deep into a project with the wrong team. Engineers frequently forget that their job is to solve problems, not make new ones
I’ve never needed to hire a engineer in my life and thought it would be a weight lifted off my shoulders but it was the exact opposite.
The day I get to just write a check and have it done right for literally anything will be the greatest day of my life. The whole “if you want it done right, you’ve got to do it yourself” thing isn’t a joke. The reality is sometimes there’s just no solution to the amount of work that you can do yourself, and that’s when you hire people
Shop around
I’d also recommend having a code consultant first, to then decide what engineers to hire.
This 100%. What I really need is a cloning machine so I can clone myself and my business partners. Good help isn’t just hard to find - it’s damn near impossible.
We’ve written a lot of cheques. I would say that for ones that were for services rather than goods, probably half of that money was effectively a waste, where we ultimately received little to no real value from that spend.
A good code consultant will save you a ton of time and money. A bad one will cost you both. Ditto engineers.
We hired and fired 2 code consultants and 3 engineering firms before we found ones we stuck with. Everyone talks the talk. Very few can back up that talk.
Yeah, on my distillery it was…
5 real estate agents
2 code consultants
3 architects
6 engineers?
Gotta fire em until they’re smart