The Kings Of Cool

27

There was a lot to do to get the house ready.

Especially if you were Ben.

“ Solar panels? ” Chon asked.

“Do you know how much energy we’re going to be using?” Ben asked. Solar energy would supplement the generator and therefore use less natural gas.

“Do you know how much solar panels cost?” Chon countered.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Because they cost a lot.

Worth it to Ben-convictions are easy if they’re cheap. Also, Ben wasn’t going to trash out the house or the neighborhood.

On this topic, Ben and Chon had your Vulcan Mind Meld.

Ben had ethical concerns, Chon had security concerns, but they came to the same conclusion-do not make the grow house look like a grow house.

Chon did his due diligence as to what cops look for:

Condensation on the windows, or — the windows covered with black plastic or newspaper.

Sounds of an electric hum or constant fans.

Bright interior lights left on for long hours.

Local power failures.

(You cause a brownout while the wife next door is TiVo-ing The Bachelorette, she’s going to turn your ass in.

“I would,” O affirmed.)

Smell-a thousand marijuana plants smell like a Bard College dorm on a Friday night.

Residents in the home only occasionally.

People coming in and out at odd hours and staying only a few minutes.

“This is all handle-able,” Ben said.

First they put in the solar panels to supplement the energy. Then they soundproofed the walls in the basement to cover the noise from the generator.

Then they went CGE. This came from Ben’s research and it meant

Closed Growing Environment.

“I like the ‘Closed’ part,” Chon said.

Indeed.

What CGE does is basically control the flow of air in and out of the grow room. It ain’t cheap-they had to install aluminum and sheet metal vent pipes connected to a five-ton air-conditioning system fitted to forty-gallon coconut carbon charcoal filters.

“So the neighborhood is going to smell like coconuts?” O asked.

“It won’t smell like anything,” Ben said.

O was a little disappointed. She thought it would be fun to have a neighborhood that smelled like suntan lotion and drinks with umbrellas in them.

It’s an article of faith with Ben that problems generate solutions, which generate more problems, which generate more solutions, and he labels this endless cycle “progress.”

In this case, the five-ton AC unit solved the cooling and odor problem, but created another.

AC units are cooled by either air or water, and a lot of it.

If it’s the former, it’s pulling the air out of…

… well, the air… and it makes a lot of noise.

If it’s water, the water bill goes way up and you have the same utility-company-as-snitch problem.

The boys pondered this.

“A swimming pool,” O suggested. “Put in one of those aboveground pools.”

Genius.

A swimming pool is full of…

… water… justifies the water bill, and besides…

“We could collect the condensation, pump it back into the pool, and recycle,” added Ben.

Of course.

“Plus we could go swimming,” O said.

In addition to the house renovation — and they hadn’t even gotten to the rewiring they had to buy — metal halide lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps, thousand-watt bulbs, sixteen-inch oscillating fans, grow trays, reservoir trays for the nutrient mixture, the nutrient mixture, hundreds of feet of piping and tubing, pumps, timers for the pumps “And pool toys,” O said. “Can’t have a pool without toys.”

They hadn’t sold an eighth yet and they were already looking at a $70,000 outlay for start-up costs.

That was for one house, but they did it. Took Ben’s savings, Chon’s combat-pay bonuses, and then hit the volleyball courts in search of suckers to hustle. Fortunately, P. T. Barnum was right, and they raised the money in a few months of game, set, and match.

Grew primo product and reinvested the small profit into another house, then another and another, making Craig Vetter a very happy surfing Realtor.

Now they have five grow houses and are working on a sixth.

It costs money.

Which is why Chon doesn’t let people rip them off.

Much less lay a violent hand on their people.