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