growing with flourecent light bulbs

the only difference is efficiency and penetration. get high wattage flourescents like the ones that replace 500 watts or something. get cool white for veg and warm white for flower, mix the spectrum if you can. figure out the square footage, and give yourself about 5000 lumens per square foot. its very important to keep the lights close to your plants.

if you can get a small hps like 70 watts or 150 watts security light that will help a lot for your flowering photoperiod. if your concern is heat the flourescents give off more per watt but the heat is spread over more surface area ie the bulb. you are going to need a grid of lights over your grow for decent yields and again your penetration will not be as good hence not as dense buds. the hps can hit spectrums below 2700k (2700 kelvin. this is the color of the light not the wavelength, but it demonstrates wavelength in its hues. kelvin is the temperature of a steel object as it hits different colors. bluer light higher kelvin and redder light is lower kelvin) which is good for stimulating flowering production but with CFLs you can add lots of blue in there to give the plant better vegetative growth than the hps with 6500k (cool white)

you can get good results though and it is very inexpensive as a setup not to mention your chance of fire is less using lights that don't rely on air cooling. in the long run you will learn like I did that hps, metal halide, and supplemental cfls in different spectrums are gonna be the closest thing to natural sunlight and give you the best yields, density, vigor, and potency.

i think everyone should learn with cfls because if you do graduate to HID lighting you will be much more efficient and creative with placement and layout and your initial results will probably be better.

 

DAYlight is better than cool white for flowering. the color spectrum of it is measured in kelvins and that is the important number. HPS puts out about 2100k (very red light, helps in flowering). a soft white puts out 2700k(also good for flowering. switch all bulbs to this when flower). cool white is about 4000k-5000k(great for veg, blue light) and DAYlight bulbs are 6500k(VERY good for veg)


didnbt even read that^. now you have ti twice (wish i could make smoke smilie)

 

99% sure those are 100 watt equivalent which means they are 23-27 watt actual CFL's so not that great of a deal.

You can buy 125 watt actual CFL's that will fit in a normal socket for 25 dollars on amazon, or you can buy 42 watt actual CFL's for 2.88 each at 1000bulbs.com.

Sounds like you should do more research before you jump in, a couple hours spent reading can save you tons of money and time down the road.