Tips For Grow Room Safety
3 Marijuana Growing Safety Tips from CannabisNet on Vimeo.
Every week, there are several stories that make the news about marijuana growers burning homes, warehouses, and offices because of accidents. Growing your own pot at home can be rewarding and fulfilling, but it requires care and attention to detail for your safety. With more people having access to legal marijuana than ever in the past, surely the number of people experimenting with grow operations in their closets and garages has increased dramatically.
Most grow related accidents are preventable. Here’s what you can do to keep your home grow operations safe:
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As tempting as it may be, don’t light up in your grow room. Leave it as a place to enjoy your plants and let them grow in peace. The best way to avoid fire is to prevent anything that burns and sparks out of the room.
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Have at least one extinguisher in your home grow area; a self-actuating fire extinguisher is even better. Don’t scrimp on the basics - you should also have a smoke detector; these things can help you sleep soundly at night. Make sure to have regular checks so you know it works well, and take note of its “use by” date so that you can replace it when needed. Have a flashlight next to the extinguisher; in the event of a fire, electricity and lights won’t be working and you’ll only have growing flames in a dark place. If you are growing your plants at home, it’s best that you invest in a fire-resistant door; two would even be better as these are extremely effective in preventing the spread of fire.
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Always have an exit plan: assuming that a fire does happen, do you know exactly which route you’re going to take? How can you safely evacuate yourself and other people out of the building? How can you communicate with other people in the building to alert them of a fire?
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Keep your grow room a strictly extraction-free zone. Dabbing is here for good, and it will only continue to rise in popularity throughout the coming years. But a surefire way to blow up your grow operations is by using flammable petrochemicals on your nugs, and the risk is made even worse with all the electrical equipment and grow lights lying around. All the extraction chemicals you use should be stored outside.
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Know exactly how much electricity your system can handle. Install ground fault receptacles in areas that may accumulate moisture, as well as arc fault circuit breakers. Avoid using extension cords with your ballast. Don’t stress your power points and cables, and use a proper connector if you have to splice wires. All electrical components should be kept off the floor as much as possible; this adds to fire prevention safety but will also reduce the chances of you tripping on the wires. Most importantly, before you even get started with marijuana grow operations, make sure that you are familiar with the basics of electrical safety!
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Use a timer or manually regulate the temperature because if the ventilation system uses a thermostat, it will only feed the flames with oxygen. If a fire breaks out while you’re asleep or out, there will be no way to automatically strangle the fire. Louvered vents are useful because they close when air isn’t going through it, which prevents the fire from feeding on oxygen through the exhaust. If you can afford it, go for a remote thermostat which you can operate from your computer or mobile phone.
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Water can be just as dangerous as electricity in marijuana grow rooms. You can slip on it; it can breed bacteria, mold, and mosquitoes, and it’s a conductor of electricity. If water is dripping into your grow room, it can get into electrical outlets and wire systems causing even bigger problems down the road. Condensation caused by humidity is even harder to detect because it’s less visible although it can cause problems too. Leave a bend or “drip loop” in cables which allows condensation to accumulate at the lowest area of the cable instead of running and reaching the bulb or plug. Make sure that the feed tank is full before you leave the room, and that the taps are off. Sometimes even the most obvious mistakes can still be taken for granted, causing fires.
I hope you found these tips on basic marijuana grow room safety to be useful, and that it’s helped keep both you and your plants safe.
What safety rules do you follow for your grow room? Share them with us in the comments below.
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