will a 250w cfl do?

okay so i have a very small growroom, floor size is 34" x 19" with a height of about 3 foot. that height sadly includes pot size and light room. i have 1 x 250w cfl hanging about 4" from 4 plants ive put in there. will that be enough light for them? iwas going to hang a small 20w cfl in each corner but i have heat issues already, this is a stealth grow in my bedroom so discretion is key for sound and smell.

If you cant control temps looks like you dont have a choice in the matter, I would use more smaller bulbs but it should be alright, maybe find a few smaller flouro tubes for sidelighting or maybe an led panel or two.

would extra warm flo strips do the job? does anyone know the least amount of W you can get in a cfl?

First off I am fairly new to this and don't know squat about CFL's an flouros, but they make 250w CFLs!?? ... I had not the slightest idea. Unless that's not the true wattage.

freeze600cc said:

First off I am fairly new to this and don't know squat about CFL's an flouros, but they make 250w CFLs!?? ... I had not the slightest idea. Unless that's not the true wattage.

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That is the true wattage my friend, they do a 300w as well. A 250w cfl is good for two plants I'd say, Unless you get a screen and scrog them.

Peace

Like dark said, more smaller ones will give you less heat than one big one. I was using CFLs for most of my first grow and I could put quite a few 26w ones in there without any real heat issues but once I put a couple 68w ones in there with the others it got hot. I was using a PC fan rated at 120-130 CFM I think an dit wasn't enough once I put the 68w ones into play.
You can get the 26W 6500K bulbs pretty cheap and they come in 4 packs so you could easily pick up a coule of those and arrange your lights all around your plants for pretty even coverage. I had mine all over the place and then rotated the plants around too just be sure the light was being distributed as evenly as posible. In hindsight that was overkill but it was my first grow...

Check the first thread in my sig and you'll see what I mean. It was a mess but I still got around 2oz. dry out of it.

thanks, you mentioned the word OVERKILL, what is this so i can avoid it?

Haha, that's funny. Just don't mess with your plants to much and you'll be fine.

they make 13 or 14w cfls, but I think they put out more heat than they are worth and wouldnt use them, warm white tubes should work if youve got em.

freeze600cc said:

First off I am fairly new to this and don't know squat about CFL's an flouros, but they make 250w CFLs!?? ... I had not the slightest idea. Unless that's not the true wattage.

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they do make 300w and 150w ones too, but they are not self ballasted, you gotta get one for them. right now the biggest self ballasted is 105w that ive seen, but the technology is improving, when i started 2 1/2 3 years ago most 65 or 68w needed the seperate ballast and the ones that were self ballasted were the biggest they made like that, now most are self ballasted.

yeah the 250w ive got is self ballasted , i looked in our local hardware store today and i saw the T5 florescent tubes i heard ppl talking about, they also had T4's T8's allsorts, does it really matter about model or make , or just the spectrum?

mr parky said:

yeah the 250w ive got is self ballasted , i looked in our local hardware store today and i saw the T5 florescent tubes i heard ppl talking about, they also had T4's T8's allsorts, does it really matter about model or make , or just the spectrum?

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your sure its self ballasted? t5's are more powerful than t8s which are stronger than t12's...well, i think you should get how the system works.