250 hps vs 250 cfl

damned double post!!

TGFW21 said:

my friend has had plants been ready almost a week before they were supose to be ready and he was growing in soil and using CFLs

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My firend once grew 1/2 lb in five weeks using a candle.

When you say 'supose to be ready' is that going by breeders stated flower time or your own experience of growing same strain under HPS?

I have 2x200w CFL setup and give clones to a mate with 400w HPS, his finish two-three weeks quicker and yields more.

He has to water/feed his plants more often than mine under CFL (same pots, dirt, nutes etc) which also means they're growing quicker.

emmpey said:

My firend once grew 1/2 lb in five weeks using a candle.

When you say 'supose to be ready' is that going by breeders stated flower time or your own experience of growing same strain under HPS?

I have 2x200w CFL setup and give clones to a mate with 400w HPS, his finish two-three weeks quicker and yields more.

He has to water/feed his plants more often than mine under CFL (same pots, dirt, nutes etc) which also means they're growing quicker.

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my friend grow's his under CFLs he perfers the taste of CFL growen comparted to HPS growen

Wow!! Now light method also changes the taste? Any evidence of this? Anyone?

yeah light methods does not change the taste he justprobably did not grow it right

Growing under CFL makes your plants more intelligent too.

hey man i have a 250w agro sun if you were to do a closet stealth i recommended at least a 12 inch fan, or a good way to circulate the air, it will get hot. real hot if it is covered. cfl won't produce that much heat, i use my light cause its great for flowering, but i have seen people get good results on riu with cfl's

Well actually light could affect the taste, hps puts of IR which cant be removed by heat extraction, cfl does not

la9 said:

Energy goes into the bulb in the form of power = voltage * current.

Energy comes out of the bulb as heat or light.

The light from a bulb goes out into the room, where it lights things up, but eventually dissipates into heat.

This is thermodynamics.

So if two bulbs pull the same amount of current (voltage is usually fixed, at 120 VAC etc), then the two bulbs put out the same amount of heat.

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Well thats wrong, just because they use the same voltage they put out the same heat. So we just ignore the different method of producing the light. One being an element and one being gas? How about the fact that cfls have a coating on the inside, which is why they put off less heat. Doesnt matter if you spread them out or put them together they are still cooler than an hps. But i guess the fact that i have both a 400w hps and a 600w cfl setup doesnt matter. My knowledge comes from experience, not just reading what somebody else wrote on another thread.

If you stuck your cfl in a sealed closet , no ventilation, and ran it for a few hours your final temperature in the closet would be a good baseline.

Then stick a HID in there, same LUMEN rating range or close, run that a few hours, and read that temperature.

The HID should have heated it up less since they are more efficient meaning more lumens per watt, and therefore if more energy goes to light less goes to heat with the HID.

You'd have to compare lumen for lumen though, a 250w hid and 250w cfl don't compare equally at all lumen wise. Something like a 150 or maybe 100 hps compares to a 250cfl.

Someone with both give it a shot.

smppro My knowledge comes from experience, not just reading what somebody else wrote on another thread.

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That is why you were on here the other day asking why all your plants died, some experience you have.

Now apologize kiss-ass

check this out man

CLOSET CULTIVATOR 400 watt GROW KIT 400w HPS+MH w LIGHT - eBay (item 180136930930 end time Sep-27-08 12:18:42 PDT)


I dont know if thats a SUPER good deal, but for everything it includes, i would say its a pretty decent deal- complete setup is nice. from soil to growbags to mylar to coning/seedling tray - everything you would need to get your grow on n keep yourself in a perpetual harvest type situation - that is, except maybe for another light mount so you could have plants flowering and plants vegging at the same time....

*edit* sorry, i was gonna say originally also, if your gonna decide to go with the HPS bulb, be sure to get the conversion kit so you can also use the MH for flowering too...but if your worried about price, and efficiency, you should go CFLs all day long. granted your yield wont be as massive, but it will still be a decent yield - nothing youll cry over i dont think anyways..

K1Ng5p4d3 said:

but if your worried about price, and efficiency, you should go CFLs all day long.

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HUH? Where do you get that idea?

Half the wattage is used by HID to produce the same lumens so hid is cheaper to run, replacement hid bulbs are way cheaper than cfl's since you always re-use the ballast with HID and lastly the initial costs are comparable if not in favor of HID every time also.

I would go with 250w HPS for sure. The heat wouldn't really be an issue as long as you have some air circulation and some sort of vent in the grow space to allow the hot air to escape. You can get HPS/MH very cheap by purchasing HPS/MH flood lights. They do not have interchangeable ballasts but you could do the whole grow with a HPS. They are usually half the price of hydroponic lights and do exactly the same thing. All it requires is a little modification as you will not want to keep the unit as a whole. They are usually in a heavy casing so you need to seperate the ballast from the reflector and lamp. Not a difficult job at all. Just a simple solder job an you can get the reflector as far away as you like on a new piece of cable leaving the ballast in the original housing. Check ebay for listings and you'll be amazed at what you can find. They all come with the lamps as well which makes them extremely good value! Good luck with your grow!

250w of CFL vs. 250w of anything else will throw the same amount of heat. I have a "300w" CFL baulb but it's actually only a 66w (a 300w equevalant). So anyways, if you have 250 true watts of CFL, a 250w HID will throw the same amount of heat. But you will have a shit load more lumens. like 25000!!! However you do have to keep an HID fixture farther away from the plants.

keep it farther but it will still out perform a cfl anyday

I think I see why people get confused by the heat issue saying the CFL's burn so much cooler.

Like was posted the packaging said it is equivalent to a 300w bulb but it's only burning 66 watts. So really it is equivalent to a 66 watt HID bulb. If it was an actual 300 watt CFL then it would be burning hotter than the 250 watt HPS Everyone thinks the 66 watt bulb is burning the same wattage as the 300 watter.

cfl's are cheaper to buy and cheaper to run, i paid £20 for a 250watt envirolight and reflector, hps's will produce bigger, denser buds, but if you wanna go cfl just use a bloom accelerator to get bigger nugs, cfl's do not run as hot as hps's, you can have a cfl within inches of a plant but hps will burn the hell out of it unless you spend more money on elaberate cooling devices.

la9 said:

That is why you were on here the other day asking why all your plants died, some experience you have.

Now apologize kiss-ass

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Me? Im new but all my plants are alive, could you send me a link?. And we are going to continue to ignore the different methods of producing the light by the different bulbs. One has gas, one has filament, one has coating, one doesnt. You dont think this makes a difference?

i have a 600w hps in my closet, just get enough fans (i got two blowing directly on the bulb, one on the tops of my plants and one round the undergrowth)!!! the door is left ajar when the lights are on allowing circulation of air from around the house, have no problems, buds are filling out nicely!!!