Help needed with cfl's ?

Hi fellow growers i am currently setting up my new grow and im going to be growing autos with 30watt cfl's and 4, 4ft 38watt t5's i have added up the lumens and altogether there will be around 20.000 lumens,

How many auto's do you guys reckon i could grow and get a good yield of using this amount of lumens ???

Come on guys over 100 views and no comments someone most know ???

pretty sure you need more watts then lumens for cfl grow. atm i got 252watt equivalent to 1,000watts at 2,700kalvens in 10 different bulbs for flowering on 1 plant . my lumens are only 16,920.

but for veg i ran 4 42 watt equivalent to 800watts at 6,500kalvens with 11,200 lumens for veg. iran 24 hours of veg for only 4 weeks for 3 plants. 2 were males and now i got all those lights for my one female.

but i think they the minimal cfl wats for one plant is 100watts. but id do as many as u can, the more cfl bulbs the better. the cfl rays only go so far. more bulbs = more rays = larger buds.

Thanks man for your comment, i nipped out last night and got some more 30watt cfl's alltogether i now have 8 cfl's and 4 4ft 38watt t5's, iv just ordered 2 auto's just as an experiment

nice, hope u get good results =)

You should consider how tall you want these girls to be.
The CFLs wont penetrate dense foliage every well so you also have to keep it well trained.
You need to keep your CFLS dam near inches away to get the best out of them.
But be careful the tips will burn after about 20 or so minutes touching the leaves.
its going to be a daily adjustment game to get the most of them.
That T5 should make up for what the CFLS lack.
Im no expert on CFLs but i have used them in the past.
Make sure you get a mixture of soft white and daylights to even out your spectrum.

siq is right about the amount of lumens needed 10800 is about as low as you can go
but CFLs are hard to put in this category since this is a measure of footcandles and CFLs lose a lot
strength the further away they are placed.
Now with that said 1 foot away is going to be about the limit you want them but the closer the better.
Sry for rambling im a little stoned

oh and to answer your first question I thin about 6 plants trained well will yield the best results
for your 4 CFL and T5

are you going to increase the wattage for flowering?

i have hear of people using 2400k 3100k 5000k and 6400k during flowering. but for a newbie i am only using 2700k and things are looking good.

This scale will tell you what to expect when looking at the Kelvins of any light unit.
I have read that its wise to stay away from any light in the range of 3000k-4500k.
those ranges wont provide enough useful light to your plants.

I may keep the same wattage but will focus on the Soft white more during flowering then then Daylight CFLs.

Thanks for your help Remo iv done a few grows using cfls, just not used the t5 lighting yet should get my seeds soon hopefully as the grow room is all ready

Remo2025 said:

This scale will tell you what to expect when looking at the Kelvins of any light unit.
I have read that its wise to stay away from any light in the range of 3000k-4500k.
those ranges wont provide enough useful light to your plants.

I may keep the same wattage but will focus on the Soft white more during flowering then then Daylight CFLs.

Click to expand...

Nice chart man.
I never saw one like this before!