What would you do?

So I'm looking into growing for the state. The space I'm thinking about renting out is 30 feet by 30 feet. I definitely think this size and operation, in order to make money doing it you'd have to go hydro. My question is what would be the best system to go with. Regardless a trip to home depo is in order. Advice please.

I don't mean to come off as flippant, but if you want to grow in such a space you'll want to have the experience and determination to build, operate and maintain a DIY system. My opinion.

A big ass ebb and gro system with 32 buckets and 8 1kw lamps. Grow em into 4 foot trees.

I'm not trying to sound big headed or full of myself. I am confident I could be successful at doing this. I grow medically. My last harvest was 30 plants in soil. And after everything was cured and packaged I was a little over weight with what Washington State allows two patients to have at 4 lbs. And that was trimmed bud. I had a lot of trim I didn't weigh out. I'm confident I can handle a size like that and I'm confident I can make money doing this. My problem is I lack the experience with hydro systems. I have a single stage waterfarm with one unit right now. I'm waiting for that to finish up. Then I'll switch to the eight unit waterfarm I bought. So far at week four of bloom the plant is amazing and beautiful. I just know at that size building a system would probably be cheaper than buying one. Besides the people who are growing in large scales already had to start out somewhere right?

Thanks for your input Johnny. My concern with using buckets is cozy of hydroton. Cause filling up my 8 unit system costed quiet a bit.

if you have little experience running hydro jumping into something that big is a stretch imo.

I'd maybe go half dirt half f&d for starters..See how that goes before going all in. Oh and you'll need many more than eight lights like someone suggested.

How long do you plan to veg?

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I've been contemplating something similar in the distant future. If you're not shooting for massive plants with weeks in veg, I'd think a shallow dwc system with a big, well plumbed reservoir or two. Maybe alternate the tanks between nutes and pure water. Shallow, multiple tanks maybe with separate growth ages if you're doing a sog?

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I'll say this now that i have the negative stuff out of the way.
Imo you'll want to divide that space into at least five compartments.
Two will be flower rooms on alternating 12/12.
One will be the "veg nursery" under 18/6 or 20/4.
One will be clones and moms, where you produce the next platoon of clones for the growth areas.
And one would be "engineering", where you keep your supplies, your water purifier, chillers/heaters/big pumps, spare ballasts etc. and mix nutes and other plant chems. I would seriously think about compounding your own salt ferts. Get McCaskill's book on making hydro nutrient.

If you want to go true hydro, I would gravitate toward NFT in six-inch drain pipe. Modular, fairly easy to build and run, efficient for growing and nute use.
But i would also give drain-to-waste soilless in a coir-based medium (e.g. Sunshine Mix Advanced) a serious think. You'll be laboring a lot with individual pots, but this method shines when something isn't going right. You can remove and quarantine problem plants (herms, sickies, runts) very easily, and unlike NFT or undercurent, where your plant geometries are rigid and in groups, you can shift things around. Also this is drain to waste. You never worry about reusing nute or passing something from one plant to the next ... and if you make a nute mistake or want to change the strength or blend, you can do so at the speed of thought. It is a very responsive and flexible system with a low mechanical overhead per plant, and both i and a respected grow friend have had results such that this is now our "go to" overall approach regardless of scale.

Well one big 25 dollar bag of hydroton will do a few buckets so you'll spend like 100 or so on it, and its re-useable so it's a one time buy. also, ebb and flow systems are really efficient so you save on nutes and whatnot.

In any case, having one big res is probably what you want to shoot for in the system you choose. That way you can get a pH controller and pretty much set it and forget it.

4# from 30 plants is not even close to being good yield. I get a most 3# from 12.