Cant decide between CFL or T5 HO

I'm in the desert and heat is going to be a constant battle. I will be cooling with a oscillating fan but will not be able to move air in or out besides the AC my house has. The house never gets over 78 degrees though but doesnt mean this room wouldnt heat up beyond that. This will be soil with an autoflower due to limited space. I did a Mills Pride C13 closet many years ago with a 400watt hps and could never manage temps even with an exhaust in there.

Working with a 3'W x 2'D x 3' H space in my closet. I cannot decide between a 250 Watt CFL from Apollo or a 2FT by 8 Bulb t5 HO fixture.

With the Apollo i can squeeze two in there and utilize them both at the same time from above and get double the wattage. If i wanted to put 2 T5s in there id have to mount the 2nd one against the back wall and not hang from the top and would lose space depth wise.

6500K bulbs being used in either fixture
Floro Lumens = 20K @ 190 Watts
CFL Lumens = 10,850 @ 250 Watts


Any suggestions from a non HID pro? I think either would be sufficient lighting for a smaller grow but just worried about temps.

If those lumens for the cfl is accurate it sucks. I have 4 55 actual watt cfls that put of 5100 lumens a piece.
I use a t5ho 4 bulb 4 foot light for veg in a closet that is 2.5x5x6 and it still gets pretty damn hot without exhaust running, its tipped 100 before witgout exhaust and thats having my house at 70 and my flower room which the closet comes off from at 77ish.

All in all id say your better off using storebought cfls rather than the appollo cfls as far as light output and cost.

Thanks for the feedback caveman!

how about something like a 150 or 250 watt HPS/MH. either one of what you are thinking of will give off a decent amount of heat. so if you have to cool it, go a bit bigger and get much better penetration i.e. results.

Im honestly leaning towards LED as of right now. High yields due to HID would be awesome but i dont want the heat battle. Im not planning on going crazy with exhaust and carbon filters keeping it small and simple for now.

even with LED, you're still gonna heat issues I think. the other problem you are going to have is lack of height in your cabinet. any way you could make it more like 5 ft tall?
6 sq ft X 50 watts/sq ft( a decent rule for lighting) = 300 watts.

Rkymtn is right any light you go with is going to produce pretty simillar amounts of heat with similliar wattage. For example I have a 250w metal halide that is all one piece (meaning rereflector,socket and ballast are all housed together) and it produces very simillar amounts of heat as my 216 watt t5ho.

An advantage of using hid in some situations is that you can have the ballast outside of the grow area which cuts a lot of heat out. The most heat efficient lights I have found would either be small cfls (21-55 watts) or t8 flourescents. When I say heat efficient I mean that I could run 6-7 55w cfls and produce the same amount of heat in my area that my 250mh produces.

That being said hid lighting does penetrate a lot better and gives a few options of how to handle heat. As far as those big cfls go I have a 125w that I dont even use because of how much more heat it produces than same wattage in small cfls.

6 square feet of space. 40 watts per foot of 130 LPW LED is pretty strong. 30 watts per foot of 150-160 LPW LED would do a great job too (would require DIY). In that case a 200 watt LED would rock that space and the driver could be located outside the box. If you air cool w a custom enclosure the exhaust could be fed outside the box.

LED or 250w CMH/dual arc in a cooled hood. Much cooler then cfl' of the same wattage.

The left portion of my closet has a 2ft wide by 5 foot tall space as well which i plan to use at some point. The closet as a whole pretty much is ready for perpetual grows with the 3 different spaces it has in it.

Thanks for the feedback on the lights. I'm still trying to pull the trigger on something but just so indecisive.I might just wait till after summer and go HID and give myself all winter to work on air flow