Cannabis growhouses report: Weed factories do ‘untold damage' to property
First, carpenters are sent into a premises and divide it up, constructing all the necessary separate rooms.
“The modus operandi is that a professional, often times a female, approaches a landlord with references and rents out the premises or the house,” said Detective Sergeant Brian Roberts of the GNDU. “They pay cash up front and a month in advance. Then as soon as the landlord leaves, the next people employed by the criminal groups convert and divide the rooms and areas, different people: carpenters, electricians, then the gardeners. Each group specialises in their area. They do untold damage to property, thousands of euro worth.”
In the warehouse at Durrow, near Tullamore, this involved the creation of seven separate rooms — six grow rooms and one drying room — in the unit, in addition to a kitchen, bedroom and toilet.
On top of this they had to put down a proper ceiling to support a special carbon extraction room.
Seven vents from all the grow rooms snake up to this special room, where the pungent cannabis odour is removed. More vents take the air up through the roof and outdoors, odour free.
“The extraction system was purpose built,” said Sgt Roberts. “They put a new wooden ceiling down. It’s a sizeable extraction unit. All the ducts take air from the seven rooms, pull the air out and the carbon filters neutralise the smell and it goes out through the roof.”
The extraction room looks like some kind of creature from a Dr Who episode. But the ingenuity doesn’t end there. The gang was also careful with the expulsion of air from the warehouse outdoors. They put in two sheets of corrugated plastic, with a hole in the first one, but not the second. This way the air goes under it and down and out. From the outside, there are no tell-tale holes or vents in the roof.
The electricians bypass the electricity, on the side of the meter as the supply comes into the premises. As the pictures in Tullamore show, an extensive cabling system is put in place, with makeshift circuit boards.
The consumption of electricity is enormous and constant in cannabis factories, needed to power the array of high intensity 600-800 watt sodium bulbs, in addition to timed watering system and fans.
The rooms where the cannabis is grown are subjected to 12 hours of light, followed by 12 hours of darkness. As part of this, the gang cover up all windows, often with aluminium foil, white on the outside and silver inside.
Sgt Roberts said the electricity systems in all cannabis factories, whether in warehouses or ordinary houses, are a “fire hazard”.
The intense use of high-energy lamps is hazardous as they can overheat and the overloading of sockets also pose a serious risk. Factories inside houses in residential areas pose particularly risks to both property and lives.
The Tullamore plant shows the massive amount of nutrients and fertiliser used in the operation. Sgt Roberts said these items as well as the lighting equipment can be bought in legitimate grow stores, as the same items can be used to grow other plants, such as tomatoes.
It is only illegal for retailers to sell the product if they know it is going to be used in cannabis cultivation, a circumstance that is considered highly unlikely, let alone trying to prove it beyond reasonable doubt in court.
The typical industrial factory has plants at different stages of harvesting.
“Gangs have crops at different stages of maturity, staggered, so that every couple of weeks they have a supply to meet the demand,” he said.
He said the female plant was always cultivated in the industry rather than the male plant as the latter did not produce the THC-rich flowering tops. He said harvesting time ranges from eight to 12 weeks, with a further week for drying. “If after say 10 weeks, in mature plants, the flowering tops are visible. They cut the plant at the stem and take it to the drying room and its hung upside down on wires and they keep them there for seven days. They take off the top.”
He said the plant is bagged in the drying room and that the more sophisticated gangs vacuum pack it in kilo bags to remove the smell.
All the growing is carried about by a third sub-group in the gang: the gardeners. They live, eat and breathe in the factory and never leave. The larger factories have a number of gardeners, working in shifts.
In Tullamore there were three gardeners and photographs show their living conditions.
The bedrooms were basic and grim, as was the kitchen, while the bathroom was particularly grotty.
A fourth sub-group, lieutenants of the gang leaders, bring supplies to the gardeners every so often, typically when they come to collect the bagged cannabis.
“The people at the higher level send lieutenants to come and take the product and distribute it, to foreign nationals and Irish criminal groups.”
When the GNDU raided the Tullamore warehouse in Jan 2012, they uncovered six grow rooms and a drying room, containing a massive 3,000 plants, one of the biggest factories to date.
The gardeners, aged 25, 26 and 22 and all Chinese, were arrested. They were charged, convicted and deported.
