August 10, 2010 • 35 mins
As many as one in five houses in Vancouver, British Columbia are used to grow marijuana. Join Josh and Chuck as they step inside indoor grow houses to see what's going on.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We also want to extend
a welcome back to Yeddi. Jerry, Yeah, who just got
(00:23):
back from Guatemala. Yeah, herd second tour of duty with
co ED. Yeah, she just got back. Yeah. You know what, quickly, Josh,
I should mention because I promised an I would do this.
Co ed uh still has their text donation campaign going.
Oh yeah, you can still do it. Yeah, they left
it open. So if you wanna um buy um school
books for life for Guatemalan child, you can do that
(00:46):
for five dollars by texting the words stuff to two
zero to two two very nice, and texting data rate
supply and on that gobbledegook. But yes, we would raise
a lot of money and it's still open. So she
said you should remind people from time to time. That's great.
Then Jerry just came back all like rosy from Guatemala again.
I know she's that country gut under her skin. Yeah yeah,
(01:07):
now she's getting under its skin. I don't even know
what that means. Oh, I know what it means, so, Chuck. Yes, Um,
are you familiar with the state of California. I lived there. Yes,
you did, didn't you. Um, Well, Kelly's got a proposition
on the ballot that's November, right. Have you heard of
(01:29):
Prop nineteen? I have. Prop nineteen would make if California
passes it, it would make California the first state to
legalize marijuana consumption by adults. Yeah. What's on the ballot
right now on Prop nineteen is if you're over twenty one,
you'd be able to possess and consume and make a
hat out of up to an ounce of marijuana. Yeah,
(01:52):
just like alcohol. Would be treated much like alcohol. Um,
you wouldn't be You wouldn't be allowed to have it
around schools at schools, can't sell it, can't pick up
your kids with like, you know, your ounce tucked in
your front pocket or something like that. Um. But you
can also grow it in an area up to square
(02:12):
feet really if you can. From what I saw, this
was an outdoor garden. I didn't see anything about indoor gardening. Interesting,
which just so happens to be what this podcast is about.
Look at you in your little intro. It's been a while. Oh, yeah,
it has been nice. Sorry for the hiatus. That's right,
we're back. So what you were talking about was a
(02:35):
grow room if it's a t square feet. But what
we're gonna could be a very very tiny house, the doorhouse,
a doghouse. We're gonna talk about grow houses. And uh,
Robert Lamb wrote this article and that's all I need
to say. You know it's good bam. Yeah, yeah, he
always gets real cheeky in his articles. He does. He
started out this article, which is a fine, fine article. Um.
(02:58):
And if you ever wanted to see a lot of
pop plants in an article on how stuff works dot com,
this is your chance. Um. He starts out talking about
how people like house plants. And you know, if you
have a house plant that could net you a thousand
dollars after harvesting once, why not do that? And if
(03:18):
one can do that, why not dedicate your whole house
to growing these plants? And that's pretty much what a
grow house is. Well, but because it's illegal, Josh, that's
the answer. That is the answer, actually, and thank you, Chuck.
I think we should start this one off by saying
we how stuff Works Discovery or anybody were affiliated with
(03:39):
don't endorse grow houses in any way, shape or form,
And this is just about how they operate. That's all right,
nothing else. I've got a load of stats. Can we
start with that. Let's do it, man. I dug out
some stats on marijuana use, uh Josh from a u
N report. Worldwide, a hundred and forty seven people, A
(04:04):
hundred and forty seven million people use marijuana regularly as
of two thousand two, and percentage wise, it has led.
Guess what country would you think percentage percentage percentage wise Luxembourg,
it's a good guess. I would have guess Jamaica, just
because I'm an idiot and I'm like, yeah, bub Marley, right,
(04:26):
Papua New Guinea of their country regularly uses marijuana, the
only country in the world where an outbreak of CURU
has occurred, and followed by Micronesia and Ghana, and then
I think South Africa is right after that. South Africa
is pretty populous. Yeah, well, they're smoking a lot of weed.
Well that's about worldwide. That's about ten times the number
(04:49):
of people that smoke it in the US. Right, Well,
there's different stats when you talk about pot use. Um there.
You can't leave the pot heads a compile decent stats. Well,
there's always the one stat where they're like, have you
ever tried it? And so if you're talking about that,
um of the American population over the age of twelve
has tried marijuana one time, jarringly eight percent of the
(05:13):
population under the age of twelve has tried it. Not true.
Well you didn't see that one coming. Not true. But
as far as use regular use, I think fourteen point
eight million Americans regularly, I'm sorry, I do have that
they use marijuana in the past month. Fourteen point eight
percent and twenty five percent of Americans report that they've
(05:33):
used it in the last year at least once. So
don't you always feel bad for that one person who
like hasn't used to smoke pot all the time and
then quit smoking for years and then smoked it and
then like three and a half weeks later survey and
it's like, yes, yes, I have r Really, that's not
an accurate reflection. It was a college thing. And then
(05:54):
again three and a half weeks ago, but that was it, right, Yeah,
when my college friend visited anything. So those are the
stats on marijuana use. If you're talking grow houses, Um,
Robert included a couple of cool ones in Humboldt County, California,
which is known for its good marijuana and lots of it.
They I think it says one thousand out of the
(06:18):
homes in that county are grow homes. Yes, because they
supply a lot of the medical marijuana in California. Yeah,
and they enjoy some protection from the government, at least
the county government, if not I guess the state government too,
because California has had uh legalization of medical marijuana sin. So,
(06:39):
but apparently that covers the growers and the sellers, but
not the people who transport it. Yeah, which is interesting.
It is, which is it's gotta be a nerve wracking job.
You know. It's like you're the only one left out there. Uh.
And I think Vancouver is the other cool stat was
in Vancouver, Canada, one out of every five house this
is a grow house, they say. Apparently the um the
(07:01):
the grow house. The pot growing industry in British Columbia
employed an estimated twenty thousand to sixty thou people in
two thousand and Um, they're two thousand. Yield was like
four billion dollars worth or something. Wholesale jeez, I've got
one more stat because I promised in Atlanta stat when
(07:23):
we did our prison podcast and Georgia was like the
number one in prisons. Either that or you will eventually
that promise. I'm not sure which order we're releasing these,
but Atlanta, Georgia. Of the people arrested in Atlanta, uh
say they have smoked pot within the past month, arrested
for whatever? Really? Yeah, and that leads the nation in
(07:44):
the A T L. Yeah, Stone like them white boys
smoking them white buds. All right, Josh, grow houses, let's
do this, all right, Chuck. If you are a grow
house operator, like you said, it's not just grow room
you got going. Your entire house is dedicated to growing marijuana.
It's a big business. It's a huge business running your
(08:06):
own business essentially, right, and you have a lot of
stuff to pull up, put up with. It's a very
high stressed job, especially in areas where it is in
no way, shape or form legal, which is most places.
Not only are you um prime for being robbed by
armed gun men who just want to basically take all
your pot or your money, or unarmed potheads you just
(08:28):
want on your rippers, is what they're called of yours
homegrown Billy Bob Thornton. Oh, yeah, is that what they're calling. Yeah,
I haven't seen that in a while. Um. Let's see.
You've so you've got being ripped off or being shot
while you're being ripped off. You've got the cops. Um,
you have basically the people who are buying from you
that you have to keep happy. Um. But really, at
(08:51):
the center of this, from what I understand, is the plant, right,
and it's this isn't just a this is not The
operations are not just I've got some plants growing around.
These are incredibly intense farming operations. Um, very sophisticated, and
they are very people have figured out what the ideal
(09:14):
conditions to grow marijuana is and we will share them now. Yeah,
and not only grow marijuana, but they figure out the
ideal conditions to grow the most potent um, the most
dense marijuana per plant, so you get the maximum bang
for your buck when you get a cell like apparently
a well informed indoor operation produces pot with fifty more
(09:37):
THC than the stuff growing outdoors. Really that's what I read. Uh, So, Josh,
there's a couple of ways you can do this. Um,
you can grow it um in soil like just a
regular role plant, or you can grow it hydroponically, which
is pretty popular these days. Hydroponics Josh is um. You've
probably heard that name on the news, and if you
(09:58):
didn't know what it was, it it means that you're
not using soil. It's a plant growing without soil, right,
they use a nutrient rich water. Yeah, it's not just
pot plants. You can grow anything hydroponically or I don't
know about anything, but yeah, I think pretty much any
plant you could grow hy Anybody who's been Epcot has
seen hydroponics in action exactly. Yeah. I think they grow
(10:18):
big old hydroponic tomatoes down there. Really. Yeah, but basically
you're you have you are showing human domination and exploitation
over a plant when you grow it without soil and
just a nutrient rich solution. Yes, and uh so, what
you're talking about are containers and trays, drip systems, automated
(10:39):
watering systems or manual humidifiers humidifiers and I mean these
are just a few of the things you need for hydroponics. Well,
and not just not just hydroponics. I mean you're probably
gonna need a dehumidifier, a drip irrigation system. No matter
how you're growing, the plants can be fairly demanding, right yes, Um,
And you're also going to need light, lots of light
(11:01):
because with a grow house, you'll find, as we keep talking, um,
most grow houses are totally sealed off from the rest
of the world for very good reasons. So they they're
creating this artificial environment and so there's no sunlight whatsoever
that ever touches these plants. Um. It's all basically thousand
(11:22):
horticulture bulbs, UM. And apparently those can sustain twelve to
fifteen plants. And as Robert puts it into perspective, this
is a thousand wat bulb and the average incandescent light
bulb in a house UM runs from forty watts to
a hundred and fifty watts, Right, chuck, have you ever
(11:42):
turned a hundred and fifty what light off and unscrewed
it real quick? It's very hot, And that's a hundred
and fifty These guys are using a thousand watt light
bulbs and that's just for twelve to fifteen plants. So
if you have a couple of hundred plants in a house,
that's sealed off her medically. It's gonna get kind of hot, right, Yes,
(12:03):
it is. Let's talk about those lights for a minute.
Thousand wants a piece. What you're doing is trying to
mimic the sun, so obviously you want it to be
very powerful. And the other thing you're doing is you're
you're affecting how this plant actually grows. The life cycle
and the growing and the budding cycle of this plant.
You can completely control if you're growing indoors, because the
(12:27):
sun is not there to get in the way. You
can fake it all. Yeah. You can use reflectors to
get as much UM light as you can, so it's
it's being exposed to light directly by the bulb and
indirectly from this some reflective I guess material. Yeah right,
um you I think they've figured out that what is
sixteen to eighteen hour days are optimal to get them started. Yeah,
(12:50):
that's the beginning of the of the growth period. And
then when you want your plant to flower, you slow
it down, you shorten the days, and then all of
a sudden boop. And this also may for bigger, denser buds. Yeah.
And for those of you not hip to the cause,
that's where you That's that's where the money is. That's
where the Yeah, it's a flowering plant and the flower
(13:12):
is the bud and it's the female that flowers. So
all the plants in there in the grow house are female.
They weed out all the males, and they're essentially controlling
the sun to to an extent where they can produce
this super potent pot. Right, And if you look for
this article on hostaff Works, you will find it very
appropriately in the flowering plants subchannel. Is it? Yes? Interesting,
(13:36):
This could go on a lot of sub channels. It
definitely like the adventure channel or entertainment. I don't know.
So you talked about the heat. That is the big
it is a problem also, um electricity is a big
problem to chuck because think about it. Remember we said
(13:56):
that averaging cadescent bulb is forty two hundred and fifty watts.
You're running several thousand wat bulbs and like your average
living room is just wired to handle one most living
rooms can handle one one WA bulb, which means you
better known electrician A and be that electrician. Better love
free pot because you're gonna need to rewire your house. Yeah,
(14:20):
rewire the house a lot of times they'll jack into
the A lot of times I'll hire former or current
power company employees to help him out. Current power company,
very nice, Bullett, and uh they will sometimes they will
rewire that the home or the grid on that street.
That will re reroute power to your house, which messes
(14:42):
everyone else up and potentially maxes out the grid in
your area. Yes, it does do that also exposes everybody
to electrocution. If you didn't use a power company guying,
you tried it yourself. Yeah, which is a really bad idea.
No matter what you're stealing power for to grow pot
(15:03):
because you don't like paying utility companies, it doesn't matter.
Rewiring the electricity that's coming into your house is a
really bad idea. Yeah. That's how my granddad died. No,
it's not, Yeah, no, it's not. Yeah, he was. He
was knocked from a telephone pole. He was electrician. He
wasn't like rewiring for grow houses. But he was like
(15:23):
thirty feet up in a telephone pole. And you know,
you you test out the wire by hitting the back
of your hand to it, or you did back then,
because if you did the front of your hand, it
can grasp ahold of it, so he hit it on
the back of his hand. It was a live wary
and it knocked him out of the pole and he
landed on his head and then spent the next like
a few years in a hospital bed was ruling, and
then he died. What a little kid. I didn't know.
(15:47):
That's the most amazing dead grandfather's story. I know, very
sad well, and I never hardly knew him. So h
Getting back to the heat though, Um, finally, marijuana. If
you have a house, a girl house full of these lights,
it could potentially be a hundred degrees fahrenheit inside your
house at night at night. So that's a problem because
(16:08):
it's really hot and that's not comfortable. And by the way,
that's thirty eight degrees celsius for friends who don't live
in libraria. But it's also a problem because marijuana grows
best between seventy and eighty degrees and can do okay
up to about if it's a CEO two rich environment, right,
and they have to do artificially. They figured out that
(16:29):
that's kind of what you want, I guess from indoor
grow houses. These horticulturists to figure it out that you
do want to keep it hot, because you do want
the CEO to environment Richard, because again it produces thicker, denser,
bigger buds, which is bigger money. Again yes, uh. And
so to combat the heat though, what they do is
they put a lot of a lot of air conditioning
(16:49):
units ventilation fans uh to maintain their temperature. And Robert
pointed out that one one thousand what bulb requires a
fan and tw eight a single fan and twenty hundred
British thermal units of cooling and a typical five tons
a C unit puts about sixty b t u s
out right, so you're you're central A C unit outside
(17:12):
of your house could conceivably handle you know, a small
house grow operation, right, but it has to run constantly,
which again means that you are using up the juice
and a fan on each plant. So if you've got
two D plants, you've got two hundred fans running on
top of the a C unit. Like you can assign
a fan to a lot more than one plant. Well,
(17:35):
if you don't know what you're doing, check just proved
his innocence, that's right. The other thing that's a problem
is just like any plant that you're growing, is insects
and mildew and spores, fungus. I got more on that
in a second, but yes, well let's hear it. No, well,
the way they combat that jerk is uh charcoal filtration,
(17:57):
Uh increasing CEO two levels that kill these things. Yeah,
it's also good for the plants. Yeah. I thought that
was really clever because you think about it, an insect
needs oxygen to live to right, so you just jack
up the CEO two levels suffocates everything and um, but
your plants are like, oh yeah, bring it on. And
(18:17):
the other thing you'll do is I'll just seal it
off from the outside world. So you're domatically sealed off. Yeah,
as a few insects as possible. Yes, So chuck. Um.
Not only does seiling off your plants, your whole grow operation,
your entire house um from the outside world good for
your plants. Number one, you don't have you have completely
(18:38):
climate controlled conditions. You have a natural gas burner to
introduce more c O. Two. You um, you know exactly
what the temperature is going to be because you know
how many lights you have going. You have your a
C set to the perfect temperature. Um. It also prevents
the cops from getting hip to your operation, right, is
(19:00):
it's illegal? Well, yeah, you mentioned the charcoal filter for
outgoing air. You still have to vent your air, right yeah. Um,
so you you have a charcoal filter, it's gonna cut
down on the smell of pot because, as Robert points out,
pot has a very distinctive smell, and hundreds of pot
plants have a really really strong distinctive smell. Right, So
(19:22):
the coffee can isn't going to cover that up. No
downy or a paper talel toe with downy seats on
the end, Now, that's not gonna work. So you're right.
They used the filtration systems to send the air back
out and hopefully your neighbors are never wise to the
fact that their their person living next door to them
probably isn't even living next door. It's probably just full
of marijuana plants. Many times it is. Well, remember you
(19:44):
said that you want ideally, if you're going to steal electricity,
you want a guy from the power company to do it. Um.
And one of the reasons why you would steal electricity
is um because the power company will notice if you
have a power bill that's six to seven times the
average for the house your size, and it's like that
every month that's gonna tip them off. A lot of
(20:07):
growers will stagger the days. Like let's say you have
a grow house, but your house is is set up
into several different rooms, so each room would represent you know,
you have a day going in one room, and then
it's nighttime and a couple other rooms, and it's starting
a day in another room. So you're you're using the
least amount of electricity at once, right, Um, and it's staggered.
(20:29):
Powered companies know to look for that kind of thing
and they'll turn in they will. So a lot of
growers will um use generators. Right. But these, first of
all are very expensive ten thousand to twenty tho bucks. Right, Yeah,
that's that's for the big, the big daddy that can
like run your whole house. Right. Apparently a fifty light
fifty light thousand watt grow operation needs about eighty kilowatt,
(20:55):
so you do need a big daddy generator. Problem is,
big daddy generators are super super loud. And again if
you are you know, not in a rural area, which
most grow houses are not out in the sticks, just
because there's not that many houses out there right there
in the suburbs. So you really have to figure out
how to deftly steal your electricity, or you have to
(21:17):
figure out how to mask the noise of your generator. Yeah,
the other problem with the generator is it can break down.
You're not tied to the grid. And if your generator
breaks down at the wrong time and you've got two
hundred thousand dollars worth of pot growing in your house,
that means your business is in jeopardy. So it's a
fire hazard. I mean, generator is not necessarily the smartest
way to go. No um. And in the same way
(21:39):
that that electricity or the need for electricity presents a
problem and a requirement, so too does a need for water. Right,
you gotta water your plants. Even if you have an
extremely efficient system, right, an automatic drip system, you're still
going to use a lot more water than you normally
would in a house. So number when you get the
(22:01):
water company keeping tabs on this water usage that in
the house's history has never been remotely like this, they'll
turn you into right. Um, But again, people have figured
out how to steal water. Um. Those water meters they
actually there there. They have paddles that are spun by
the water that's coming into the house. So people have
(22:22):
figured out that you can drill holes in these paddles
so more water passes through than its detected, and that
just primitively ingenious. Yeah it is. Yeah, I didn't know
that until I read this. Josh. Let's talk about managing
a grow house a grow house and how how you
how you would do that. There's a lot of factors
because it is a business. Um, you've got a lot
(22:42):
of money coming in out, You've got people you've got
to manage. Yeah. I didn't really realize this that a
lot of them are set up by secret investors. It's
not just organized crime or really really ambitious potheads. It's
very likely not a very ambitious pothead. If you've got
a grow house, like a grow room, maybe, but a
grow house is very likely run by somebody else in
(23:04):
a larger organization, right, and that person probably will never
set foot in that house. No, they'll fund it right
with cash that can't be traced back to them, but
they will probably never go near it right through. They
probably don't smoke pot that's my guess. They look at
it like units. Yeah, theyre's making money. Sure. Uh. We
talked about people that work there. It is not necessarily
(23:27):
like the Billy Bob Thornton movie with a dude and
his buddies running their grow house. A lot of times
it's more nefarious, and it's um someone who has been
brought into the country illegally to repay a favor for
being brought in. They may say, all right, you gotta
sort of be are indentured servant here and work at
this grow house for so long, for this one season
(23:48):
or whatever. But yeah, there's a big problem. One of
the big arguments against the poorous border in the south
of the US is that coyotes make people smuggled drugs
act as mules when they're running through the desert, you know,
getting into the US. They have they tend to have
lots and lots of drugs on them. They're being exploited.
(24:08):
I didn't realize that they were forced to manage grow
houses too, but that was pretty interesting. Well, see that
a prostitution, but it's specifically in California, he said. The
Vietnamese immigrants tend to have to do this to pay
off debts. Absolutely. Well, I think I'd rather work in
a grow house and be forced into prostitution. You would
it take you forever to pay off your debts as
(24:30):
a prostitute. I appreciate that. I think, uh so that
is how you would manage it with temporary workers. Um,
during the season, when it's the harvest season, you might
bring in additional workers. And chances are these people aren't
on the up and up either. They're not your buddies.
It's maybe illegal immigrants once again, right. And one of
the reasons why you would not want this position is
(24:53):
because again this is a very dangerous job to have. Um.
Even if this isn't your stuff, you have no idea
what's going on. You just came in the country illegally.
You're nervous about that to begin with, but even more
nervous because you are spending your first few months in
an illegal grow house. Um. Which is why, as we said,
most grow houses are not in the rural areas there
(25:15):
in the suburbs here in Georgia, tons of them all
over They're always Gwynette Henry, They're all over the place. Um.
And so you want your house to blend in in
every way, shape or form. Right, And as Robert said,
this can be uh, this can include buying garden gnomes
just like a regular dude. Yeah. Um, you want to
(25:37):
keep the the um the flow of traffic to a minimum,
but you don't want it to look like no one
ever comes there because that's pretty suspicious as well. You
want to be friendly, I imagine, but you don't want
anybody to be to feel comfortable asking questions personal questions,
that kind of thing. You don't black out your windows
with aluminum foil, No, you don't, not that kind of thing.
(25:59):
You want your wrote rooms within the grow house to
be like just like I said, within the house, right.
And also there's um, you remember we talked about infrared
cameras that cops used to bust grow houses because they
could sense heat. Do we talk about that? We talked
about this like in some other podcast. Remember I crashed
the case on it. Um. So apparently one way to
(26:21):
combat this in a girl house is a room within
a room, right, So you're when you're sealing it off,
you're not using your whole the whole room in the house.
You're allowing you're basically setting up a room within a
room to grow in so that that the outside room
can kind of keep it cool. So from a helicopter,
when you're looking at a house, it doesn't look like
(26:42):
it's putting out more heat than average, right, or like,
look that that guy is clearly an illegal Vietnamese immigrant
because he's sweating bullets in there exactly. That's that's the
that's the level of hundred degrees in their home. Yet
they're running their A C unit constantly. The silly people. So, josh,
you got a neighbor, they're pretty cool. They never cause
(27:03):
you any problems. They're real quiet. They keep their yard
nice and trim in their garden, homes shiny. What's the
what's the problem? Then, if someone has got to grow
house next door to you, why wouldn't you want that? Well,
first and foremost, you don't want people coming to rob them. Okay,
that's one thing when we talked about the electrical grid,
(27:23):
So it can mess up your electrical system, yeah, or
pose a fire risk to your neighborhood if you are
in any way shape or form an environmentalist. Um, the
idea of somebody using six to seven times the average
of a normal single family residents in electricity, you realize
that that adds to a lot more pollution, yeah, um,
(27:45):
And it also can add to it much more directly.
In two thousand eight, in Humboldt, there was an environmental
disaster where a thousand gallons of diesel fuel spilled into
a local creek and it was for it was from
a generator really um that was operating a grow house
out in the sticks, out in the woods. UM. And actually,
as a result of that, Humboldt County has undertaken a
(28:07):
public service announcement campaign for local growers, urging them to
go like to get greener in their practices because there's
really not an environmentally friendly means of cultivating plants indoors. Well, dude,
if it's gonna happen anywhere, it's gonna happen in northern
California because they are very green and they love their weed.
Another problem, Chuck, if I may, you may, thank you. Uh.
(28:30):
And with indoor growing, um, all the conditions needed to
um encourage an outbreak of black toxic mold, they're all present. Apparently,
toxic mold outbreaks have been linked to grow houses, and
those actually drive up the homeowners insurance of everybody in
the area. Which one house has black mold, everybody's insurance
(28:51):
goes up. Well, it's yeah. And that's the other thing too,
is chances are when you leave the grow house behind
or when you're busted, it's probably not gonna be some
like great house left in good condition. It's probably ransacked
and maybe water damaged or or heat damaged. And that's
gonna obviously bring down the property value in your neighborhood too,
So most decidedly that's another good reason. But if your
(29:13):
neighborhood already has low property values thanks to foreclosures and
abandoned houses that have boarded up windows and doors, you
are basically living in an area that is absolutely perfect
for grow houses. One of the unintended, unexpected consequences of
the current housing crisis in South Florida grow houses in
(29:35):
huge neighborhoods that have abandoned in forclosed houses like the
High Acres. Yeah, Auban's apparently are big into it down there, Well,
Florida's way into it. I was trying to find the
biggest grow house that's ever been busted. And by the way,
if you type into Google news search for the year
two thousand ten grow houses, you get a hundred and
(29:57):
eighty four articles just on grow house busts this year
on Google News. They're all over the place. But the
biggest one I found, and this may not be the biggest,
but there was one in Lake County, Florida, where there
were two thousand plants in this home. And I remember
there was one I saw an article when I was
working at my last job where this I think it
was in Tennessee where they showed this dude's grow house
(30:19):
and he had in the in the basement rear of
the house, there was this hatch and all of a sudden,
in this hatch was a You opened the door and
there was a you know, a fifteen foot diameter tunnel
that went like a hundred feet into this mountain where
there was more operations going on, Like this dude tunneled
into the side of a mountain from his basement and
(30:40):
they busted him. And these are the just the bust.
I mean, imagine how many of there are still operating
on a daily basis all around the country. Well that
was another thing too, um the you you talked about
real estate prices being driven down by a busted girl.
House prices can also go up if, especially if an
organization who's funding these things decides that they want to
(31:03):
buy a dozen houses in a suburb suburban area at once,
you know, in a small enough area, that's gonna really
affect that the housing prices in the area and drive
them up because it's it's reducing the supply of available homes. Yeah,
pretty interesting stuff. I thought this whole thing was good.
I thought so too. If you want to read this
great article by Robert Lamb, you can type in grow
(31:24):
houses on the search bar at how stuff works dot com. Again. Again, again,
cannot stress this enough. This podcast, in no way, shape
or form, represents any kind of endorsement of any illegal
activity whatsoever. Yeah, people always ask us, you know, you
should cover pot legalization or cover drugs in different ways,
and we've wanted to because it's really interesting and it's
(31:46):
a part of the American fabric. You can't just ignore it,
be like, what are you talking about? That's not interesting?
But it's it's tricky for us, you know. Well, yeah,
it's hard to talk about grow houses and explain how
to do it without sounding like we're giving a tutorial
on how to do it. But the way I look
at it, Chuck, is ultimately our goal or the goal
of the site, is to explain absolutely every aspect of
(32:06):
the world. Yeah, including ticks. One at a time, including
roots sixty six including grow houses and everything else in
between the track. So, Chuck, what is it time for
listener mail? Do we have it? Yep, I've got one today, Josh.
I'm gonna call this our best voodoo email. Dear Chuck
(32:28):
and Josh, I just listened to your voodoo podcast and
thought I had a fun story you might like. I
was dating a guy back in two thousand seven who
I thought was deeply religious, had lots of statues all
around his house, sat candle's and a very odd quote
spice rack unquote. Around our third week together, I found
out he practiced voodoo and was an actual bocor bocor
(32:51):
Ore voodoo sorcerers. I think we pointed this out of
the podcast, as he told me they served a looa
with both hands and practice both white and black magic.
All the statues were for the voodoo rituals he performed,
and he could keep them out, uh, keep the bad
spirits out, and not worry about his very Catholic roommate
who would also not stay around. Clearly, even though he
(33:12):
should have explained to him that there were a lot
of of Catholicism and voodoo, I was not on good
terms with my parents at the time. There were Mormons
who work in the temple. Oh yeah, mom and dad,
this guy and this is the guy too, So he's
obviously gay as well. So he's probably not popular with
his parents, his Mormon parents, I would think, as far
(33:33):
as we can tell. As far as we can tell,
they may have loved him being a gay guy dating
a voodoo bocrest. So anyway, the black magic practicing boyfriend
was right up my alley at the time. This is
from uh Mal and Tri Cities, Washington. And I actually
confirmed that I could read this on the air because
it's a little you know, tricky, and he said sure
(33:56):
because he was a big jerk, So go ahead and
read it. Okay, Thanks Mal. That was that was far
and away the most interesting voodoo email that we got. Uh.
And I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologize
to everybody else who send us voodoo emails. Seriously, Uh,
if you want to send us an email about anything
at all, Uh, we'd love to hear from you. Just
(34:18):
wrap it up, send it to stuff podcast. Wait, Chuck,
we're on Facebook. We got a killer Facebook presence. Yeah,
thanks especially to you. Well more than fifteen thousand fans now,
which warms our hearts, and people are active and commenting
and sharing things, and it's exactly how I hoped it
(34:39):
would be. We've got almost six thousand followers on Twitter.
You're killing the Twitter. Very funny stuff. We have blog, uh,
stuff you Should Know on how stuff works dot com.
Great blog, and we have a ton of other blogs
on how stuff works as well. Um, and we have
a Kiva page. We are trying to make it to
a quarter of a million dollars donated by the first
(35:03):
anniversary of our team's inception, Yeah, which is October six,
I believe. Yeah, and big thanks to Glenn and Sonia
who have sort of been running the team for us,
and we just made it to the two hundred thousand
dollars loaned mark. That's awesome man. Yeah. So if you
want to join, you can go to Kiva dot org.
It's www dot k i v a dot org slash
(35:27):
team slash Stuff you Should Know. And again, if you
have an email you want to send us, wrap it up,
send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com? Want more? How
stuff Works. Check out our blogs on the house stuff
(35:49):
works dot com home page.
Welcome to stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We also want to extend
a welcome back to Yeddi. Jerry, Yeah, who just got
(00:23):
back from Guatemala. Yeah, herd second tour of duty with
co ED. Yeah, she just got back. Yeah. You know what, quickly, Josh,
I should mention because I promised an I would do this.
Co ed uh still has their text donation campaign going.
Oh yeah, you can still do it. Yeah, they left
it open. So if you wanna um buy um school
books for life for Guatemalan child, you can do that
(00:46):
for five dollars by texting the words stuff to two
zero to two two very nice, and texting data rate
supply and on that gobbledegook. But yes, we would raise
a lot of money and it's still open. So she
said you should remind people from time to time. That's great.
Then Jerry just came back all like rosy from Guatemala again.
I know she's that country gut under her skin. Yeah yeah,
(01:07):
now she's getting under its skin. I don't even know
what that means. Oh, I know what it means, so, Chuck. Yes, Um,
are you familiar with the state of California. I lived there. Yes,
you did, didn't you. Um, Well, Kelly's got a proposition
on the ballot that's November, right. Have you heard of
(01:29):
Prop nineteen? I have. Prop nineteen would make if California
passes it, it would make California the first state to
legalize marijuana consumption by adults. Yeah. What's on the ballot
right now on Prop nineteen is if you're over twenty one,
you'd be able to possess and consume and make a
hat out of up to an ounce of marijuana. Yeah,
(01:52):
just like alcohol. Would be treated much like alcohol. Um,
you wouldn't be You wouldn't be allowed to have it
around schools at schools, can't sell it, can't pick up
your kids with like, you know, your ounce tucked in
your front pocket or something like that. Um. But you
can also grow it in an area up to square
(02:12):
feet really if you can. From what I saw, this
was an outdoor garden. I didn't see anything about indoor gardening. Interesting,
which just so happens to be what this podcast is about.
Look at you in your little intro. It's been a while. Oh, yeah,
it has been nice. Sorry for the hiatus. That's right,
we're back. So what you were talking about was a
(02:35):
grow room if it's a t square feet. But what
we're gonna could be a very very tiny house, the doorhouse,
a doghouse. We're gonna talk about grow houses. And uh,
Robert Lamb wrote this article and that's all I need
to say. You know it's good bam. Yeah, yeah, he
always gets real cheeky in his articles. He does. He
started out this article, which is a fine, fine article. Um.
(02:58):
And if you ever wanted to see a lot of
pop plants in an article on how stuff works dot com,
this is your chance. Um. He starts out talking about
how people like house plants. And you know, if you
have a house plant that could net you a thousand
dollars after harvesting once, why not do that? And if
(03:18):
one can do that, why not dedicate your whole house
to growing these plants? And that's pretty much what a
grow house is. Well, but because it's illegal, Josh, that's
the answer. That is the answer, actually, and thank you, Chuck.
I think we should start this one off by saying
we how stuff Works Discovery or anybody were affiliated with
(03:39):
don't endorse grow houses in any way, shape or form,
And this is just about how they operate. That's all right,
nothing else. I've got a load of stats. Can we
start with that. Let's do it, man. I dug out
some stats on marijuana use, uh Josh from a u
N report. Worldwide, a hundred and forty seven people, A
(04:04):
hundred and forty seven million people use marijuana regularly as
of two thousand two, and percentage wise, it has led.
Guess what country would you think percentage percentage percentage wise Luxembourg,
it's a good guess. I would have guess Jamaica, just
because I'm an idiot and I'm like, yeah, bub Marley, right,
(04:26):
Papua New Guinea of their country regularly uses marijuana, the
only country in the world where an outbreak of CURU
has occurred, and followed by Micronesia and Ghana, and then
I think South Africa is right after that. South Africa
is pretty populous. Yeah, well, they're smoking a lot of weed.
Well that's about worldwide. That's about ten times the number
(04:49):
of people that smoke it in the US. Right, Well,
there's different stats when you talk about pot use. Um there.
You can't leave the pot heads a compile decent stats. Well,
there's always the one stat where they're like, have you
ever tried it? And so if you're talking about that,
um of the American population over the age of twelve
has tried marijuana one time, jarringly eight percent of the
(05:13):
population under the age of twelve has tried it. Not true.
Well you didn't see that one coming. Not true. But
as far as use regular use, I think fourteen point
eight million Americans regularly, I'm sorry, I do have that
they use marijuana in the past month. Fourteen point eight
percent and twenty five percent of Americans report that they've
(05:33):
used it in the last year at least once. So
don't you always feel bad for that one person who
like hasn't used to smoke pot all the time and
then quit smoking for years and then smoked it and
then like three and a half weeks later survey and
it's like, yes, yes, I have r Really, that's not
an accurate reflection. It was a college thing. And then
(05:54):
again three and a half weeks ago, but that was it, right, Yeah,
when my college friend visited anything. So those are the
stats on marijuana use. If you're talking grow houses, Um,
Robert included a couple of cool ones in Humboldt County, California,
which is known for its good marijuana and lots of it.
They I think it says one thousand out of the
(06:18):
homes in that county are grow homes. Yes, because they
supply a lot of the medical marijuana in California. Yeah,
and they enjoy some protection from the government, at least
the county government, if not I guess the state government too,
because California has had uh legalization of medical marijuana sin. So,
(06:39):
but apparently that covers the growers and the sellers, but
not the people who transport it. Yeah, which is interesting.
It is, which is it's gotta be a nerve wracking job.
You know. It's like you're the only one left out there. Uh.
And I think Vancouver is the other cool stat was
in Vancouver, Canada, one out of every five house this
is a grow house, they say. Apparently the um the
(07:01):
the grow house. The pot growing industry in British Columbia
employed an estimated twenty thousand to sixty thou people in
two thousand and Um, they're two thousand. Yield was like
four billion dollars worth or something. Wholesale jeez, I've got
one more stat because I promised in Atlanta stat when
(07:23):
we did our prison podcast and Georgia was like the
number one in prisons. Either that or you will eventually
that promise. I'm not sure which order we're releasing these,
but Atlanta, Georgia. Of the people arrested in Atlanta, uh
say they have smoked pot within the past month, arrested
for whatever? Really? Yeah, and that leads the nation in
(07:44):
the A T L. Yeah, Stone like them white boys
smoking them white buds. All right, Josh, grow houses, let's
do this, all right, Chuck. If you are a grow
house operator, like you said, it's not just grow room
you got going. Your entire house is dedicated to growing marijuana.
It's a big business. It's a huge business running your
(08:06):
own business essentially, right, and you have a lot of
stuff to pull up, put up with. It's a very
high stressed job, especially in areas where it is in
no way, shape or form legal, which is most places.
Not only are you um prime for being robbed by
armed gun men who just want to basically take all
your pot or your money, or unarmed potheads you just
(08:28):
want on your rippers, is what they're called of yours
homegrown Billy Bob Thornton. Oh, yeah, is that what they're calling. Yeah,
I haven't seen that in a while. Um. Let's see.
You've so you've got being ripped off or being shot
while you're being ripped off. You've got the cops. Um,
you have basically the people who are buying from you
that you have to keep happy. Um. But really, at
(08:51):
the center of this, from what I understand, is the plant, right,
and it's this isn't just a this is not The
operations are not just I've got some plants growing around.
These are incredibly intense farming operations. Um, very sophisticated, and
they are very people have figured out what the ideal
(09:14):
conditions to grow marijuana is and we will share them now. Yeah,
and not only grow marijuana, but they figure out the
ideal conditions to grow the most potent um, the most
dense marijuana per plant, so you get the maximum bang
for your buck when you get a cell like apparently
a well informed indoor operation produces pot with fifty more
(09:37):
THC than the stuff growing outdoors. Really that's what I read. Uh, So, Josh,
there's a couple of ways you can do this. Um,
you can grow it um in soil like just a
regular role plant, or you can grow it hydroponically, which
is pretty popular these days. Hydroponics Josh is um. You've
probably heard that name on the news, and if you
(09:58):
didn't know what it was, it it means that you're
not using soil. It's a plant growing without soil, right,
they use a nutrient rich water. Yeah, it's not just
pot plants. You can grow anything hydroponically or I don't
know about anything, but yeah, I think pretty much any
plant you could grow hy Anybody who's been Epcot has
seen hydroponics in action exactly. Yeah. I think they grow
(10:18):
big old hydroponic tomatoes down there. Really. Yeah, but basically
you're you have you are showing human domination and exploitation
over a plant when you grow it without soil and
just a nutrient rich solution. Yes, and uh so, what
you're talking about are containers and trays, drip systems, automated
(10:39):
watering systems or manual humidifiers humidifiers and I mean these
are just a few of the things you need for hydroponics. Well,
and not just not just hydroponics. I mean you're probably
gonna need a dehumidifier, a drip irrigation system. No matter
how you're growing, the plants can be fairly demanding, right yes, Um,
And you're also going to need light, lots of light
(11:01):
because with a grow house, you'll find, as we keep talking, um,
most grow houses are totally sealed off from the rest
of the world for very good reasons. So they they're
creating this artificial environment and so there's no sunlight whatsoever
that ever touches these plants. Um. It's all basically thousand
(11:22):
horticulture bulbs, UM. And apparently those can sustain twelve to
fifteen plants. And as Robert puts it into perspective, this
is a thousand wat bulb and the average incandescent light
bulb in a house UM runs from forty watts to
a hundred and fifty watts, Right, chuck, have you ever
(11:42):
turned a hundred and fifty what light off and unscrewed
it real quick? It's very hot, And that's a hundred
and fifty These guys are using a thousand watt light
bulbs and that's just for twelve to fifteen plants. So
if you have a couple of hundred plants in a house,
that's sealed off her medically. It's gonna get kind of hot, right, Yes,
(12:03):
it is. Let's talk about those lights for a minute.
Thousand wants a piece. What you're doing is trying to
mimic the sun, so obviously you want it to be
very powerful. And the other thing you're doing is you're
you're affecting how this plant actually grows. The life cycle
and the growing and the budding cycle of this plant.
You can completely control if you're growing indoors, because the
(12:27):
sun is not there to get in the way. You
can fake it all. Yeah. You can use reflectors to
get as much UM light as you can, so it's
it's being exposed to light directly by the bulb and
indirectly from this some reflective I guess material. Yeah right,
um you I think they've figured out that what is
sixteen to eighteen hour days are optimal to get them started. Yeah,
(12:50):
that's the beginning of the of the growth period. And
then when you want your plant to flower, you slow
it down, you shorten the days, and then all of
a sudden boop. And this also may for bigger, denser buds. Yeah.
And for those of you not hip to the cause,
that's where you That's that's where the money is. That's
where the Yeah, it's a flowering plant and the flower
(13:12):
is the bud and it's the female that flowers. So
all the plants in there in the grow house are female.
They weed out all the males, and they're essentially controlling
the sun to to an extent where they can produce
this super potent pot. Right, And if you look for
this article on hostaff Works, you will find it very
appropriately in the flowering plants subchannel. Is it? Yes? Interesting,
(13:36):
This could go on a lot of sub channels. It
definitely like the adventure channel or entertainment. I don't know.
So you talked about the heat. That is the big
it is a problem also, um electricity is a big
problem to chuck because think about it. Remember we said
(13:56):
that averaging cadescent bulb is forty two hundred and fifty watts.
You're running several thousand wat bulbs and like your average
living room is just wired to handle one most living
rooms can handle one one WA bulb, which means you
better known electrician A and be that electrician. Better love
free pot because you're gonna need to rewire your house. Yeah,
(14:20):
rewire the house a lot of times they'll jack into
the A lot of times I'll hire former or current
power company employees to help him out. Current power company,
very nice, Bullett, and uh they will sometimes they will
rewire that the home or the grid on that street.
That will re reroute power to your house, which messes
(14:42):
everyone else up and potentially maxes out the grid in
your area. Yes, it does do that also exposes everybody
to electrocution. If you didn't use a power company guying,
you tried it yourself. Yeah, which is a really bad idea.
No matter what you're stealing power for to grow pot
(15:03):
because you don't like paying utility companies, it doesn't matter.
Rewiring the electricity that's coming into your house is a
really bad idea. Yeah. That's how my granddad died. No,
it's not, Yeah, no, it's not. Yeah, he was. He
was knocked from a telephone pole. He was electrician. He
wasn't like rewiring for grow houses. But he was like
(15:23):
thirty feet up in a telephone pole. And you know,
you you test out the wire by hitting the back
of your hand to it, or you did back then,
because if you did the front of your hand, it
can grasp ahold of it, so he hit it on
the back of his hand. It was a live wary
and it knocked him out of the pole and he
landed on his head and then spent the next like
a few years in a hospital bed was ruling, and
then he died. What a little kid. I didn't know.
(15:47):
That's the most amazing dead grandfather's story. I know, very
sad well, and I never hardly knew him. So h
Getting back to the heat though, Um, finally, marijuana. If
you have a house, a girl house full of these lights,
it could potentially be a hundred degrees fahrenheit inside your
house at night at night. So that's a problem because
(16:08):
it's really hot and that's not comfortable. And by the way,
that's thirty eight degrees celsius for friends who don't live
in libraria. But it's also a problem because marijuana grows
best between seventy and eighty degrees and can do okay
up to about if it's a CEO two rich environment, right,
and they have to do artificially. They figured out that
(16:29):
that's kind of what you want, I guess from indoor
grow houses. These horticulturists to figure it out that you
do want to keep it hot, because you do want
the CEO to environment Richard, because again it produces thicker, denser,
bigger buds, which is bigger money. Again yes, uh. And
so to combat the heat though, what they do is
they put a lot of a lot of air conditioning
(16:49):
units ventilation fans uh to maintain their temperature. And Robert
pointed out that one one thousand what bulb requires a
fan and tw eight a single fan and twenty hundred
British thermal units of cooling and a typical five tons
a C unit puts about sixty b t u s
out right, so you're you're central A C unit outside
(17:12):
of your house could conceivably handle you know, a small
house grow operation, right, but it has to run constantly,
which again means that you are using up the juice
and a fan on each plant. So if you've got
two D plants, you've got two hundred fans running on
top of the a C unit. Like you can assign
a fan to a lot more than one plant. Well,
(17:35):
if you don't know what you're doing, check just proved
his innocence, that's right. The other thing that's a problem
is just like any plant that you're growing, is insects
and mildew and spores, fungus. I got more on that
in a second, but yes, well let's hear it. No, well,
the way they combat that jerk is uh charcoal filtration,
(17:57):
Uh increasing CEO two levels that kill these things. Yeah,
it's also good for the plants. Yeah. I thought that
was really clever because you think about it, an insect
needs oxygen to live to right, so you just jack
up the CEO two levels suffocates everything and um, but
your plants are like, oh yeah, bring it on. And
(18:17):
the other thing you'll do is I'll just seal it
off from the outside world. So you're domatically sealed off. Yeah,
as a few insects as possible. Yes, So chuck. Um.
Not only does seiling off your plants, your whole grow operation,
your entire house um from the outside world good for
your plants. Number one, you don't have you have completely
(18:38):
climate controlled conditions. You have a natural gas burner to
introduce more c O. Two. You um, you know exactly
what the temperature is going to be because you know
how many lights you have going. You have your a
C set to the perfect temperature. Um. It also prevents
the cops from getting hip to your operation, right, is
(19:00):
it's illegal? Well, yeah, you mentioned the charcoal filter for
outgoing air. You still have to vent your air, right yeah. Um,
so you you have a charcoal filter, it's gonna cut
down on the smell of pot because, as Robert points out,
pot has a very distinctive smell, and hundreds of pot
plants have a really really strong distinctive smell. Right, So
(19:22):
the coffee can isn't going to cover that up. No
downy or a paper talel toe with downy seats on
the end, Now, that's not gonna work. So you're right.
They used the filtration systems to send the air back
out and hopefully your neighbors are never wise to the
fact that their their person living next door to them
probably isn't even living next door. It's probably just full
of marijuana plants. Many times it is. Well, remember you
(19:44):
said that you want ideally, if you're going to steal electricity,
you want a guy from the power company to do it. Um.
And one of the reasons why you would steal electricity
is um because the power company will notice if you
have a power bill that's six to seven times the
average for the house your size, and it's like that
every month that's gonna tip them off. A lot of
(20:07):
growers will stagger the days. Like let's say you have
a grow house, but your house is is set up
into several different rooms, so each room would represent you know,
you have a day going in one room, and then
it's nighttime and a couple other rooms, and it's starting
a day in another room. So you're you're using the
least amount of electricity at once, right, Um, and it's staggered.
(20:29):
Powered companies know to look for that kind of thing
and they'll turn in they will. So a lot of
growers will um use generators. Right. But these, first of
all are very expensive ten thousand to twenty tho bucks. Right, Yeah,
that's that's for the big, the big daddy that can
like run your whole house. Right. Apparently a fifty light
fifty light thousand watt grow operation needs about eighty kilowatt,
(20:55):
so you do need a big daddy generator. Problem is,
big daddy generators are super super loud. And again if
you are you know, not in a rural area, which
most grow houses are not out in the sticks, just
because there's not that many houses out there right there
in the suburbs. So you really have to figure out
how to deftly steal your electricity, or you have to
(21:17):
figure out how to mask the noise of your generator. Yeah,
the other problem with the generator is it can break down.
You're not tied to the grid. And if your generator
breaks down at the wrong time and you've got two
hundred thousand dollars worth of pot growing in your house,
that means your business is in jeopardy. So it's a
fire hazard. I mean, generator is not necessarily the smartest
way to go. No um. And in the same way
(21:39):
that that electricity or the need for electricity presents a
problem and a requirement, so too does a need for water. Right,
you gotta water your plants. Even if you have an
extremely efficient system, right, an automatic drip system, you're still
going to use a lot more water than you normally
would in a house. So number when you get the
(22:01):
water company keeping tabs on this water usage that in
the house's history has never been remotely like this, they'll
turn you into right. Um, But again, people have figured
out how to steal water. Um. Those water meters they
actually there there. They have paddles that are spun by
the water that's coming into the house. So people have
(22:22):
figured out that you can drill holes in these paddles
so more water passes through than its detected, and that
just primitively ingenious. Yeah it is. Yeah, I didn't know
that until I read this. Josh. Let's talk about managing
a grow house a grow house and how how you
how you would do that. There's a lot of factors
because it is a business. Um, you've got a lot
(22:42):
of money coming in out, You've got people you've got
to manage. Yeah. I didn't really realize this that a
lot of them are set up by secret investors. It's
not just organized crime or really really ambitious potheads. It's
very likely not a very ambitious pothead. If you've got
a grow house, like a grow room, maybe, but a
grow house is very likely run by somebody else in
(23:04):
a larger organization, right, and that person probably will never
set foot in that house. No, they'll fund it right
with cash that can't be traced back to them, but
they will probably never go near it right through. They
probably don't smoke pot that's my guess. They look at
it like units. Yeah, theyre's making money. Sure. Uh. We
talked about people that work there. It is not necessarily
(23:27):
like the Billy Bob Thornton movie with a dude and
his buddies running their grow house. A lot of times
it's more nefarious, and it's um someone who has been
brought into the country illegally to repay a favor for
being brought in. They may say, all right, you gotta
sort of be are indentured servant here and work at
this grow house for so long, for this one season
(23:48):
or whatever. But yeah, there's a big problem. One of
the big arguments against the poorous border in the south
of the US is that coyotes make people smuggled drugs
act as mules when they're running through the desert, you know,
getting into the US. They have they tend to have
lots and lots of drugs on them. They're being exploited.
(24:08):
I didn't realize that they were forced to manage grow
houses too, but that was pretty interesting. Well, see that
a prostitution, but it's specifically in California, he said. The
Vietnamese immigrants tend to have to do this to pay
off debts. Absolutely. Well, I think I'd rather work in
a grow house and be forced into prostitution. You would
it take you forever to pay off your debts as
(24:30):
a prostitute. I appreciate that. I think, uh so that
is how you would manage it with temporary workers. Um,
during the season, when it's the harvest season, you might
bring in additional workers. And chances are these people aren't
on the up and up either. They're not your buddies.
It's maybe illegal immigrants once again, right. And one of
the reasons why you would not want this position is
(24:53):
because again this is a very dangerous job to have. Um.
Even if this isn't your stuff, you have no idea
what's going on. You just came in the country illegally.
You're nervous about that to begin with, but even more
nervous because you are spending your first few months in
an illegal grow house. Um. Which is why, as we said,
most grow houses are not in the rural areas there
(25:15):
in the suburbs here in Georgia, tons of them all
over They're always Gwynette Henry, They're all over the place. Um.
And so you want your house to blend in in
every way, shape or form. Right, And as Robert said,
this can be uh, this can include buying garden gnomes
just like a regular dude. Yeah. Um, you want to
(25:37):
keep the the um the flow of traffic to a minimum,
but you don't want it to look like no one
ever comes there because that's pretty suspicious as well. You
want to be friendly, I imagine, but you don't want
anybody to be to feel comfortable asking questions personal questions,
that kind of thing. You don't black out your windows
with aluminum foil, No, you don't, not that kind of thing.
(25:59):
You want your wrote rooms within the grow house to
be like just like I said, within the house, right.
And also there's um, you remember we talked about infrared
cameras that cops used to bust grow houses because they
could sense heat. Do we talk about that? We talked
about this like in some other podcast. Remember I crashed
the case on it. Um. So apparently one way to
(26:21):
combat this in a girl house is a room within
a room, right, So you're when you're sealing it off,
you're not using your whole the whole room in the house.
You're allowing you're basically setting up a room within a
room to grow in so that that the outside room
can kind of keep it cool. So from a helicopter,
when you're looking at a house, it doesn't look like
(26:42):
it's putting out more heat than average, right, or like,
look that that guy is clearly an illegal Vietnamese immigrant
because he's sweating bullets in there exactly. That's that's the
that's the level of hundred degrees in their home. Yet
they're running their A C unit constantly. The silly people. So, josh,
you got a neighbor, they're pretty cool. They never cause
(27:03):
you any problems. They're real quiet. They keep their yard
nice and trim in their garden, homes shiny. What's the
what's the problem? Then, if someone has got to grow
house next door to you, why wouldn't you want that? Well,
first and foremost, you don't want people coming to rob them. Okay,
that's one thing when we talked about the electrical grid,
(27:23):
So it can mess up your electrical system, yeah, or
pose a fire risk to your neighborhood if you are
in any way shape or form an environmentalist. Um, the
idea of somebody using six to seven times the average
of a normal single family residents in electricity, you realize
that that adds to a lot more pollution, yeah, um,
(27:45):
And it also can add to it much more directly.
In two thousand eight, in Humboldt, there was an environmental
disaster where a thousand gallons of diesel fuel spilled into
a local creek and it was for it was from
a generator really um that was operating a grow house
out in the sticks, out in the woods. UM. And actually,
as a result of that, Humboldt County has undertaken a
(28:07):
public service announcement campaign for local growers, urging them to
go like to get greener in their practices because there's
really not an environmentally friendly means of cultivating plants indoors. Well, dude,
if it's gonna happen anywhere, it's gonna happen in northern
California because they are very green and they love their weed.
Another problem, Chuck, if I may, you may, thank you. Uh.
(28:30):
And with indoor growing, um, all the conditions needed to
um encourage an outbreak of black toxic mold, they're all present. Apparently,
toxic mold outbreaks have been linked to grow houses, and
those actually drive up the homeowners insurance of everybody in
the area. Which one house has black mold, everybody's insurance
(28:51):
goes up. Well, it's yeah. And that's the other thing too,
is chances are when you leave the grow house behind
or when you're busted, it's probably not gonna be some
like great house left in good condition. It's probably ransacked
and maybe water damaged or or heat damaged. And that's
gonna obviously bring down the property value in your neighborhood too,
So most decidedly that's another good reason. But if your
(29:13):
neighborhood already has low property values thanks to foreclosures and
abandoned houses that have boarded up windows and doors, you
are basically living in an area that is absolutely perfect
for grow houses. One of the unintended, unexpected consequences of
the current housing crisis in South Florida grow houses in
(29:35):
huge neighborhoods that have abandoned in forclosed houses like the
High Acres. Yeah, Auban's apparently are big into it down there, Well,
Florida's way into it. I was trying to find the
biggest grow house that's ever been busted. And by the way,
if you type into Google news search for the year
two thousand ten grow houses, you get a hundred and
(29:57):
eighty four articles just on grow house busts this year
on Google News. They're all over the place. But the
biggest one I found, and this may not be the biggest,
but there was one in Lake County, Florida, where there
were two thousand plants in this home. And I remember
there was one I saw an article when I was
working at my last job where this I think it
was in Tennessee where they showed this dude's grow house
(30:19):
and he had in the in the basement rear of
the house, there was this hatch and all of a sudden,
in this hatch was a You opened the door and
there was a you know, a fifteen foot diameter tunnel
that went like a hundred feet into this mountain where
there was more operations going on, Like this dude tunneled
into the side of a mountain from his basement and
(30:40):
they busted him. And these are the just the bust.
I mean, imagine how many of there are still operating
on a daily basis all around the country. Well that
was another thing too, um the you you talked about
real estate prices being driven down by a busted girl.
House prices can also go up if, especially if an
organization who's funding these things decides that they want to
(31:03):
buy a dozen houses in a suburb suburban area at once,
you know, in a small enough area, that's gonna really
affect that the housing prices in the area and drive
them up because it's it's reducing the supply of available homes. Yeah,
pretty interesting stuff. I thought this whole thing was good.
I thought so too. If you want to read this
great article by Robert Lamb, you can type in grow
(31:24):
houses on the search bar at how stuff works dot com. Again. Again, again,
cannot stress this enough. This podcast, in no way, shape
or form, represents any kind of endorsement of any illegal
activity whatsoever. Yeah, people always ask us, you know, you
should cover pot legalization or cover drugs in different ways,
and we've wanted to because it's really interesting and it's
(31:46):
a part of the American fabric. You can't just ignore it,
be like, what are you talking about? That's not interesting?
But it's it's tricky for us, you know. Well, yeah,
it's hard to talk about grow houses and explain how
to do it without sounding like we're giving a tutorial
on how to do it. But the way I look
at it, Chuck, is ultimately our goal or the goal
of the site, is to explain absolutely every aspect of
(32:06):
the world. Yeah, including ticks. One at a time, including
roots sixty six including grow houses and everything else in
between the track. So, Chuck, what is it time for
listener mail? Do we have it? Yep, I've got one today, Josh.
I'm gonna call this our best voodoo email. Dear Chuck
(32:28):
and Josh, I just listened to your voodoo podcast and
thought I had a fun story you might like. I
was dating a guy back in two thousand seven who
I thought was deeply religious, had lots of statues all
around his house, sat candle's and a very odd quote
spice rack unquote. Around our third week together, I found
out he practiced voodoo and was an actual bocor bocor
(32:51):
Ore voodoo sorcerers. I think we pointed this out of
the podcast, as he told me they served a looa
with both hands and practice both white and black magic.
All the statues were for the voodoo rituals he performed,
and he could keep them out, uh, keep the bad
spirits out, and not worry about his very Catholic roommate
who would also not stay around. Clearly, even though he
(33:12):
should have explained to him that there were a lot
of of Catholicism and voodoo, I was not on good
terms with my parents at the time. There were Mormons
who work in the temple. Oh yeah, mom and dad,
this guy and this is the guy too, So he's
obviously gay as well. So he's probably not popular with
his parents, his Mormon parents, I would think, as far
(33:33):
as we can tell. As far as we can tell,
they may have loved him being a gay guy dating
a voodoo bocrest. So anyway, the black magic practicing boyfriend
was right up my alley at the time. This is
from uh Mal and Tri Cities, Washington. And I actually
confirmed that I could read this on the air because
it's a little you know, tricky, and he said sure
(33:56):
because he was a big jerk, So go ahead and
read it. Okay, Thanks Mal. That was that was far
and away the most interesting voodoo email that we got. Uh.
And I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologize
to everybody else who send us voodoo emails. Seriously, Uh,
if you want to send us an email about anything
at all, Uh, we'd love to hear from you. Just
(34:18):
wrap it up, send it to stuff podcast. Wait, Chuck,
we're on Facebook. We got a killer Facebook presence. Yeah,
thanks especially to you. Well more than fifteen thousand fans now,
which warms our hearts, and people are active and commenting
and sharing things, and it's exactly how I hoped it
(34:39):
would be. We've got almost six thousand followers on Twitter.
You're killing the Twitter. Very funny stuff. We have blog, uh,
stuff you Should Know on how stuff works dot com.
Great blog, and we have a ton of other blogs
on how stuff works as well. Um, and we have
a Kiva page. We are trying to make it to
a quarter of a million dollars donated by the first
(35:03):
anniversary of our team's inception, Yeah, which is October six,
I believe. Yeah, and big thanks to Glenn and Sonia
who have sort of been running the team for us,
and we just made it to the two hundred thousand
dollars loaned mark. That's awesome man. Yeah. So if you
want to join, you can go to Kiva dot org.
It's www dot k i v a dot org slash
(35:27):
team slash Stuff you Should Know. And again, if you
have an email you want to send us, wrap it up,
send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com? Want more? How
stuff Works. Check out our blogs on the house stuff
(35:49):
works dot com home page.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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