CFL vs FLORO vs HPS

great experiment, thanks for documenting it.

what type of CFLs are you using? the cool ones (6500K) are good for vegging I hear, but did you switch out to warmer bulbs (~2700K) for flowering?

right now all i have running are the cool but i bought a box of the warm and might go with 3 of each on this grow, but ill prolly just stick with the cools. but on my next grow if i go with only CFLs ill do a mix of warm and cool in both flower and veg.

Big, instead of 1000w of CFL, shouldn't you focus on the total lumens count emitted by all the lights combined? You can have a low wattage with a relatively high lumen count. I have 6 lights with total wattage under 500w but my total lumen output is roughly 10,000. I have one of those "Y" fittings too, with 2 bulbs in one socket.

Are you using reflectors at all or just the raw bulb? I am using reflectors on 4 of my 6 lights but I think they are creating hot spots, as I am seeing occasional leaves being burnt. And yes, I do rotate the plants every couple of hours.

im useing a reflector of sorts.i didnt have any pics of just the reflector, but if you look on the far left of the 1st pic you can see what kind im useing. thats a different grow where i combined all the lights i had. it has a 150watt CFL in it, but i also have 1x1000watt hps and 8x4' long tube floros on those plants.kinda y i started to see what works better. i was useing all the lights at once for that grow.
i had alil bit of a hot spot prob, but only if i let my plants touch the lights. i did that 1 night when i couldnt check on them like i do normaly. they grow so fast that i have to move my lights everyday sometimes more. and with those crapy clamp type reflectors it takes along time to move them all. if i do the grow with nothing but alot of CFLs ill build a frame to move the lights all at once, and use just some sheet metal to conect all the light fixtures together and work as a refector. im thinking a shape like /--\ so the lights would come down say 2' on each side and the top would be about the same. the whole thing would move up and down by cables and pullies, so with 1 pull the top would come off and i can get to the plants.
i had a setup like that but with long tube floros and it worked well for what it was. its the 2nd pic. like that but with a sheet metal frame on both sides and top. i may have to run a few lil fans to pull the heat out, but nothing major.
and about the total lumans,,,, right now im useing a 1000watt hps hortilux light that is rated at 150,000 lumans (i think thats a close number im not exactly sure) and it cost me about an extra 50.00 a month on my ele bill. i want to see what the cost/yield is on CFLs and HPS. and the only way i can think to check that is to run about the same wattage in both kinds of lights.

WoW, the floro ones real stretched badly nice experiment

Milk man, if you don't mind me asking...How many plants are you growing? You should take pics, I bet they're looking nice with all that light!

Big, I don't know if this will eff up my grow when it's time to flower or not but I have been using a combination of warm and cool CLFs througout my veg stage. Also, for the first 4 weeks, I was doing a combo outdoor grow for 10 hours, followed by 6 hours under the lights indoors. Man, I hope I don't end up with 5 hermies!

This is a great thread. Many thanks to you for doing this and proving that you can grow with CFL's.

hearmenow,,, all the best on your grow. i have no idea if that would effect the outcome as far as sex, but i got my fingers crossed for ya. ive been watching your thread and your plants look good all but that 1, but im sure it was a male that was sickly. or atleast thats what i tell myself when i lose 1. makes it alil easier for me to cope with the death if it was male.
and worse case if all turn hermi take it as a learning grow and keep growing. ive had a ton of bad grows and a ton of good ones. as long as you keep growing youll keep learning and improveing. if theres 1 thing ive learned from this site is that i dont know 1/2 as much as i thought i did. ive been growing about 13 years and learn something new almost everyday. keep your head up and your plants will soon fallow. ima glass 1/2 full kinda guy lol

claytonics,,,, thanx. i didnt plan on this much interest in the this thread, but its nice to see some may find it helpful or atleast something to read while they download ummmm "music". lol

Big, thanks for the well wishes. Much appreciated. The sickly one has recovered very nicely. It's kind of small, compared to the others but a lot denser, in terms of foliage. It actually resembles a bonsai plant a little. You know how things are sometimes, watch that one turn out to be the hardiest of them all with tons of buds. I wish, anyways.

thanks for this post, almost went out n bought floros, now i kno wut to use.

Hi, Big ...

Man, I don't know how I missed this thread ... but its really a great experiment you're doing.

I've been debating about setting up a CFL cabinet as a vegging cabinet instead of vegging under the 600 HPS. I have one cabinet with two, twenty watt, two foot floros for cuttings. I've just been transferring them to the bigger cabinet to veg under the 600 for a few weeks before starting 12/12. Now, I'm gonna convert another small cabinet into my veg cabinet using CFL and save not only a little money, but three to four weeks in production time. I'll be pulling a crop every 60 days now instead of 90 ... thanks to you and you're thread. Thanks ...

Vi

well its just a few days untill they have been flowering for a week. so far not much has changed other than the plants under the floros are strechin like crazy. they have a node set about every 3" or 4" where the others are still gettin new nodes every 1/2" to 1". the HPS are starting to look alil fuller than the CFLs. ill be takein summore pics tues.

i got bored last week and started a new cabnet that will be a full on CFL grow. its a bit on the crazy side but should be something to do. ill start a grow log as soon as i start the cabnet with details on how i made it step by step. dont wanna spoil it, but it has a mix of warm and cool CFLs. this thing is hella bright. ive got huge hopes for it, and it was way cheap to build(less than $200.00 and 6 hours to complete). gota love wal-mart lol but thats all for now.

im headin out of town so i updated the pics a day early. these pics are 5 weeks veg +6 days flowering.
pic 1 CFL
pic 2 FLORO
pic 3 HPS
pic 4 HPS, FLORO, CFL(left to right)

lookin nice man, great post! lookin forward to see this cfl muttah in action.. keep it up!

yeah, i'll take the hps.

flouro ftw

This is the kind of stuff they make books out of

To me the hps plant looks the healthiest though. An yeah a 1000 watt mh which is for the veg stage would have been interesting. All 3 of these plants look pretty small for 5 weeks though.But the hps will show its the best when 12/12 hits as the buds will be bigger and much deser..Nice lil expirenment though

thanx all for the kind words.
things are truckin right along. while in the city i did pick up a 1000watt MH light bulb. this thing is retarded big. there no way ill be able to use my cool tubes with that, but ill figure something out. maybe my next grow will be 1000watt MH veg + 1000watt HPS flower VS. 1001watt CFL. any1 know where i can pick up CFLs in bulk??? lol
as far the plants being small for 6 weeks, dude dont poop on my party. im proud as can be of my lil ladies for the most part. this is a side project. ive got somemore flowering as this grow happens. so cut me lil slack, im sure they would be bigger if i had the time to make them completely happy. you try to get the very biggest plants when youve got 6 res's, 2 strains, and 3 different PPMs cookin at the same time. lol also this is my first time growing WW so the nute balance and ph happy zone took alil toying with to get right.
the HPS plants have the tiniest lil hairs startin to show, while the other plants arent showing anything yet. i tried to get a pic of them but my camera sucks so they just came out blurry. the CFL plants still look ok "i think" for just 78watts on 3 plants. and the floros are still sad lil things.
anyway, thanx to all that read and had such nice things to say.
and Filthyfletch you suck. lol j/k i know what you ment im just stoned and like takeing things outa context to amuse myself.