New guy needs advice

Hello everyone. I'm new to growing and I have several questions. For some background on myself. I am a engineer and I live in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Florida</st1lace></st1:State>. I am an avid reef aquarium keepr and I have been very successful at that. My roommate has grown numerous time over the past few years and we recently grew several sucefful crops until being shut down. We wer just getting our system down and next thing we knew we were being circled by a ghetto bird so we had to break down. Which leads me to my first question.
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• What can they see? Our setup consisted of one 1,000w HPS light. The room was located in the center of the house in a walk in closet. The room never got above 82def F. The closet was surrounded by a master bath to the south, the master bed room to the west and a hall and bedroom to the north the east was another town house unit. We thought we were ok but I have no idea about the penetration of heat sensing equipment. We broke the closet down and relocated all the incriminating evidence including bongs and the like. This was like 3 months ago and nothing “bad” has happened. We saved what we could and harvested about a pound from 8 plants that were close to or were ready.
• Im starting up a new grow in the same place. This time I invested in a 4 foot T-5 with 8 bulbs. This is to reduce the light and heat emissions and cut power cost. My question is will a T-5 work for 6 to 8 plant( IM cutting production as I don't think I can handle 32 plants, lol props to the roomie with the green thumb)
• I also considered flowering with the T-5s for 2/3 of the cycle then finishing with the HPS. I also thought about reducing the light period in the final 2 weeks by one hour a week to push the buds. Is this ok or will it stress the plants? This will also allow me to run a cycle and increase overall production.

What do you think?

 

Yeah see that's the problem. I'm cretin that we did not get snitched on. I absolutely trust my roommate. The county I live in operates 4 of those helicopters, and I live close to the beach. They fly up and down the coast all the time, so I wonder if they just saw something of interest and were checking it out (IE: a heat signature from our room). I never got raided, and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Also we only distributed a little in this area to friends as we had a buyer that would buy as much as we could harvest.

 

No fuss just had a few questions about my new light. I'm going solo grow now and i thought i might be innovative and try something new. I could even give 2 fucks about the cops, but there was a <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">County</st1laceType> <st1laceName w:st="on">Helicopter</st1laceName></st1lace> circling my house for like 20 minutes. When i say circling I mean circling at like 250 feet with his beady little black ball pointed at my building. and as i have only 2 neighbors in the other building because landlorads are trying to sell the other 2 units in my building. And i know I was not over reacting because in the middle of thier lap session my roommate pulled up and freaked. he almost hit the kill switch before I caught his hand. That's all they needed to see he gets out of his car with a huge head of dreads and I'm standing there with a video camera watching them watch me and bam the heat signature disappears. Basically he and I broke our grow down in about 1.5 hours and he had his cloths hanging back in his closet in 2 hours and we were clean. I cant stress the impotents of minimal impact to the room, I would have been a frightened puppy if we had to patch holes or something.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>