"They've been consistently getting well over two pounds per light at 600 watts, a huge advantage compared to thousand-watt HPS lights on a single level." Mathias Fields Craft Cannabis has built an indoor multi-level cannabis cultivation facility from the ground up. They have six different operations around Southern California, with their Santa Ana facility being one of their newest.
The facility uses the California Lightworks MegaDrive 600-watt Vertical series for flowering and mothers and the MegaDrive 400 for their veg room. "It is an ideal setting for the Mega Drive Vertical series, as the individual drivers are removed from the room, and the lights can go very close to the racks," says Craig Adams of California Lightworks. "The MegaDrive used at its highest potential contributes to significant growth, and Mathias Fields Craft Cannabis has been able to put that to the test."
Craig Adams at Mathias Fields Craft Cannabis
The Mathias Fields setup
Their operation starts in the mother room, with rolling racks stacked at two levels. "This room uses the MDV 600 lights at a unique spectrum just for mothers to get the best production of cuttings and clones," according to Craig.
It is all purpose-built, so the racking suits the plants and provides easy access with good airflow. "The lights have a heavier red than a normal veg light, so you get faster growth, especially a quicker generation of clones. That's a great benefit of the spectrum control of these lights. These lights can have a separate routine for mothers, veg, flower, pre-flower, and final finishing. It's very flexible and all digitally controlled. Once you get the program dialed in for a particular strain, you can save it and run it repeatedly."
In their veg room, the Mathias Fields team uses the MegaDrive Vertical 400 series, which is a little lower power and a higher level of blue. "This is especially good for veg to get a nice bushy, compact plant before going into flower. Everything is on rolling racks and a custom spectrum for these specific strains. This design offers easy access to great airflow and makes it easy to transfer plants into another room. The facility currently contains two flower rooms and will be adding two more," Craig explains. "The space itself is incredibly well-designed. Mathias Fields includes linear fans at every level with custom electrical, lighting, and irrigation installation."
More power
The power supplies are located outside of the grow room, lined high up in a hallway, with ten on each wall. "Each power supply is running at 480 volts, three-phase. Most lights won't run on three-phase 480, so you get a lower amp range. The power supplies have an amp meter on the front. Each is running 10,000 watts at only 12.5 amps."
There are no drivers on or above the lights at all. "These are consolidated in the central power supplies, which removes the heat from the drivers out of the room and eliminates all the electrical plugs, wiring, and conduit. This makes for a clean, simple installation, and the lights can get very close to the racks."
All their lights run on a custom bloom spectrum controlled by the MegaDrive controller. "The controller is very powerful and allows you to use different spectrum strategies for different strains or phases of growth. They use different spectrum settings for mothers, veg, pre-flower, flower, and final finishing, where they vary the red/blue ratios to get the best results."
Full control
At the heart of the MegaDrive system is the controller, Craig explains. "MegaDrive is available with a touchscreen controller, which allows you to vary the red/blue rations and the overall intensity levels automatically. Changes can be done manually or over time with a calendar schedule. You can start with a veg program, move to a pre-flower setting, etc. Those settings can be saved under different names for individual strains, automatically adjusting intensity level, spectrum, and time."
The lights can also connect to a high-temperature shut-off. If AC or cooling is ever lost, the controller will dim the lights and eventually turn them off if the temperature is out of the norm. "The controller is relatively inexpensive – with a single controller, you can control a single power supply or dozens or even thousands of lights."
The Mathias Fields fertigation mixing room is all run by a Growlink computerized fertigation system with a full display and dashboard. It also monitors humidity, temperature, etc., and combines the whole operation on screen, which can also run CLW lights.
Mathias Fields prefers to run the lights with the touchscreen controller as it provides a bit more granular control. However, MegaDrive lights are also compatible with the Growlink computer, offering a range of control options.
For more information:
California Lightworks
californialightworks.com