Hey all. Things are going pretty good, plants look great,espcially when I got better/more lights. But the other when purchasing some more lights, I got some 26w CFL's, but they are about 2700k and a soft white not daylight. You can just tell because they are yellow and not SO bright, but will this matter? I will definitely get myself some more 5600k ones like I had. I mean I already bought them, and they will come in handy in the flowering stage, so its fine if I keep them in there? Also where in the hell do you people get your 26w and more CFL's, at Home Depot and Lowes they only have the energy saving ones and the best one is 27w its almost 10 bucks, I practically bought these all out and they still dont have more or even any that come close to 26w.
You can find 23w CFLs at Walmart for about $7 for 4 bulbs. These are the 100w "equivalent" kind, but of course we all know to ignore the equivalent watts. You can veg with red-spectrum light, and in fact mixed spectrum is best of all for the plants. With CFLs you do have to be a little careful, though -- you don't truly get mixed spectrum by using a mix of CFL bulbs because their light intensity is so low that you end up more with some blue-spectrum light here and some red-spectrum light there. But if you rotate your plants around every day or two you will even out the different spectra each part of each plant is getting. BTW 23w CFLs should be the same as 26w or 27w -- my first 100w "equivalent" CFLs were 27 actual watts, since then the manufacturers have made them slightly more energy efficient so can now get that "100 equivalent watts" out of 23 actual watts rather than the 26 or 27 actual watts it used to take.
REALLY? Home Depot is having a massive sale on some 23w I am pretty sure it was 23, and I know you should ot go below 20, but personally I didnt even want t below 26, but if 23w is enough you think I will do this ASAP. Packs of 4 I think for 4!! And yeah they only have ONE brand of light that outputs over like 23w at Home Depot, expensive fuckers too, almost 10$ a piece. Much thanks, looks like I need to go to Home Depot for like the 3rd time this week. Thank you for the bit about the specs, I will roate, but do you think just putting half and half next to each other would also help? I am using socket splitters, so I mean like one red spec cfl and one blue.
With a more intense output you could put the bulbs side by side and the light from each would blanket a wider area. With 23-27w CFLs the light intensity is only strong within a couple of inches, so a part of the plant 6 inches from such a bulb is getting hardly any usable light from that bulb. BTW it is becoming harder and harder to find 6500k CFLs made as household replacements because consumer prefer the light of 2700k bulbs for household use -- it is, as the package says, softer and warmer. Last place I could find 23-27w CFLs in 6500k spectrum was Lowe's.
Really? I didnt chekc that much but from the look of it Home Depot had a nice variety of light spectrums, daylight and soft white.
I dont know about your area, but walmart in socal has a fully stocked section of daylight cfl bulbs. Granted, the highest I have seen is 26 watts, but it beats 0. Walmart here also has some 42 watt 2700 bulbs for 99 cents each.
I will keep walmart in mind, and yeah anything is better then 0 but im not tryin' to grow popcorn bud here, I know CFL's can grow good shit, you need just enough.
Why not save all the trouble and buy a decent HID? HPS for flowering or MH for veg, or a combination for both stages? 400W MH + 250HPS?? I wouldnt even bother growing with CFC's more hassel than its worth. IMO