Where to buy CFLs?

go to 1000bulbs.com and get the energy miser 30 watt CFLs..... they put out 6400k and are only 3bucks each.

 

Search Ebay for 125 watt cfl. They will be ACTUAL watts. Make sure you get the Mogul socket with it. I have 3 of them.

Not sure what the difference is between the actual watts and equivalent. I'm looking into it though.

 

Lowes. Gotta find one. Drive to jersey. Gotta have one in that dump

 

That is exactly what equivalent means, 75 watt equivalent means equivalent to a 75 watt incandescent.... And people telling you not to use the equivalent wattage when getting 100 watts per plant are telling you that because that is the minimum amount of wattage you need to grow...

 

Damn, that was a little harsh. Anyways, try 1000bulbs.com like someone else said. They have a good selection, and they're pretty cheap.

 

To continue this thought...

CFLs were developed and primarily are marketed as replacements for standard household incandescent bulbs (the ones we all know that Thomas Edison invented). The problem with incandescents (not just for growing but for general purpose household lighting) is that very little of the energy they consume is used to produce light, much of that energy is converted to heat.

CFLs are much more efficient. The challenge in marketing them to the general public was how to get consumers to think about the new bulbs -- an 18 watt bulb just sounds so weak, because we are all used to 60w, 75w, 100w bulbs that we have used all our lives. So even though wattage is not a measure of light (but is just a measure of electrical consumption), consumers have a built-in understanding of bulbs of those wattages and how much light they give off. So, CFLs indicate the "equivalent" watts as a marketing shorthand way of saying "this CFL bulb that consumes 23 watts gives off about the same amount of light as a 100 watt incandescent bulb". All that won't fit on the package, so they just call it "equivalent watts", even though there is nothing at all "equivalent" about the wattage being consumed.

Now turn to MJ growing. Growers never have compared their light output to standard household incandescent bulbs, therefore the "equivalent" watts means nothing for growing. The kinds of lights we use for growing are mainly fluoro and HID. CFLs already are fluoros, and HIDs are even more efficient than CFLs, so if anything the CFL "equivalent" watts compared to HIDs would be lower, not higher, than actual watts.

Bottom line: the "equivalent" watts is a marketing gimmick for a completely different customer, different usage, and different comparison. Growers need to stick to actual watts.

 

whoa... hope you copy and pasted that.... respect...

 

toasty is full of more knowledge than a dictionary!

 

You mean you hope I had copied and pasted that from somewhere else? Nah, just rambling off the top of my head...