Michigan Flower

• Type: Grow Rooms
• Location: Hulbert, MI
• Quantity: 942 sq. ft.

Diane Fuentes--known in her small hometown as ‘The Flower Girl’--runs a small herbal shop and florist of the same name, that is one of the lone attractions in her quaint neck of the woods. Though seemingly a simple operation, Diane is actually an experienced botanist with a degree in horticulture, the art of cultivating and managing gardens. She maintains her stock year-round, using natural exterior gardens in the spring and summer, then switching to grow rooms in the cold months to edge the competition.

As any botanist knows, a grow room requires lots of water and a controlled environment to keep the plants alive through tough stretches of exterior weather. Diane has used fiberglass panels as her walls for the first five years of operation, but found that leaks and temperature became a problem because of the inherent water absorption of the material, as well as the lack of airtight seals in their construction. She decided earlier this year to remodel one of her smaller grow rooms as an experiment to see if a different type of wall panel was more efficient. Enter Duramax PVC wall panels, which she says popped up in a search for wall panels. We sent samples to Ms. Fuentes so she could get a feel for the material and test its water resistance. After a week, Daisy put in an order to redo all the walls in the small grow room, as well as the main grow room to which it was attached. She also wanted to use vinyl (PVC) to create the dividing walls between her different sections within the main facility, as the thinness and durability of PVC was a major selling point.

It took less than a week to cover the entire space. The tightness of the seals between the panels allowed Diane to control her grow room’s temperatures much more efficiently, and the 100% waterproof surfaces gave little concern over the constant flow of controlled sprinklers. Vinyl’s composition also makes it easier to prevent the formation of mold that can ruin plants. We can’t wait to see how the next crop of herbs and beautiful flowers turns out!