Looks really good 1952 and welcome to CC.

One question, why?

You have almost doubled your watts with 12 65 watters versus a 400 hps. Does this not increase your electric bill you talk about?

You have lost so many lumens, not to mention penatration, when comparing to the hid family.

I use cfl's myself but on a smaller scale, sidelighting and smaller areas, if it was myself paying that bill, I would want to get the most for my money and with that amount of wattage hid's cannot be beat.

You must have a good reason that Im overlooking?

This is my opinion and Im not there.

Vaper

Hey there Sir.Ganja. I had been askin him the same thing for a while now...the answer(correct me if I'm wrong here Pops) is the overall cost of running HID's along with cooling/exhaust fans is higher than the cost of running 0VER 3000w(output) of cfl(b/c they are using LESS than 1000w power). With this set up he's got just one extraction fan to pull (negligable amount)heat and odor up into the attic. Intake is passive(louvered doors). As he stated above, the initial cost of equipment is a fraction of what I've spent on HID's, hoods, fans, filter, etc.
So start up costs AND month to month operation costs are a fraction as well.
And look at those buds!!! WHY NOT?
Seriously, I wasn't into it for the last year or more but I can no longer argue with this set up. It's not for me, but it is really producing!
Hope the answer is pretty accurate.

One word: Very Nice!!! Ok, that's two, but you get my drift.
Those bulbs are big, as I'm used to more bulbs at a lower wattage. Clearly he has it dialed right in there

Yes sir Doobs. When he started buying those big-ass cfl's I didn't know what to think...well I guess I did, I gave him a 400w HPS. He gave it back.
Yer right though, he's got his stuff dialed in.
The info posted by my1952HD is right on, that's my old man. His closet. He's got good spectrums and light output for the energy consumed to produce 5.4 Oz off 3 TrainwWreck clones. Almost 2 ounces per plant under cfl's!
Thanks for the kind words Brother.
Happy holidays, be safe(everybody).

Season's greetings to Sir.Ganja and all of the members of CC, and thanks for the welcome.

A special thanks to floger for "outing me" but the way you were left speechless after the first harvest results were in, that was priceless.

Sir.Ganja has asked me "why?".

If you knew me, you would know the answer, "why not?" for I am a contrarian and always one to move away from the crowd in search of something different.

While my wattage usage (for these lights) is 780 watts, the equivalent output wattage is 3600 watts. Therefore I must reject your comparison to a 400 watt hps, though I will agree that 780 is almost double 400. At sometime in the near future, I will translate these figures into lumens for a better comparison.

When I used 400 watt hps bulbs, I found that (although using powered ventilation) my AC bill rose quite a bit during that first grow and when it turned cold, the ventilation system (mounted in the ceiling) was pulling heat out of the house, more electricity and natural gas usage.

You state that I "have lost so many lumens, not to mention penetration, when comparing to the hid family".

Again, I must disagree. When I used hps lights in an enclosed hood, I still had to keep the lamps a good distance above the canopy, and with some of the plants taller or shorter than others, and with the lights set for the tallest plants, well the little ones just get less useful light. (oh-oh, he's bringing out that inverse square law thingy again...) In this new grow, there are 12 fully adjustable light sources, with 2 lamps on either side of each plant, adjusted daily to maintain 1/4 to 1 inch to the nearest leaf or bud on any plant (tall or short) in direct proximity of the bulb and with 12 light sources, I got plenty of penetration.

These are (some of) my reasons/requirements:

1. Simplicity. These bulbs have standard bases and will screw into any common light fixture.
2. Inexpensive materials from local Lowes/Home Depot
3. Lowest operational cost
4. Highest output, low heat bulb and ballast (in one unit)
5. Bulbs kept as close to the plant) as possible w/out touching (I've had leaves against these bulbs with only the touching part showing burn and scissors fixed that)
6. Lowest heat signature from outdoors
7. Results: first three plants yielded 5.3 oz after cure.

The end. I hope you will look closely at floger's photos and maybe you will better understand why? I've enjoyed the responses so far and am working up more information on the rest of the setup.

P.S. If you don't mind a Mogul (E39) base, and want more lumens, 1000 bulbs.com has an 8U cfl that uses 200 watts and puts out 850 watts equiv. (let's see, times 12, that's 2400 watts input = 10,200 watts equiv. output... I would like to try those in the future but for now, I don't want anything shipped, delivered or charged. Just Home Depot on a Saturday with cash in hand...)

please don't pay attention to the wattage equiv because I damn well guarantee you if you had been blasting 3600 watts of hps in there you'd have a bigger light footprint and have more weight.

with that said your grow does look nice for using nothing but cfl. I've seen some damn good cfl grows on here one of my favorites is DB's set up.

Thanks to Organic Gardener and others for the comments.

I understand that wattage alone is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Wattage may be one of the worst units for comparison, but it’s what your electricity company bills you for (along with the hours that you use them) and the incandescent equivalent is posted on just about everything related to lighting. Even advertised lumens don’t count for much without knowing how far the photons have to travel. That’s all.

I stated earlier, "At sometime in the near future, I will translate these figures into lumens for a better comparison.” I’m still working on it and so far have the data on my 65-watt CFLs, some real nice 200 watt CFLs (850 watt equiv.), 400 watt HPS and 1000 watt HPS. Because of that inverse square law thingy, I need data from some of you out there in the highlands using HPS. I need true distance measurements from the center of the bulb to the closest green and farthest green directly under the light and the wattage of bulb. Then I can arrange this data so that any layman (me) can understand. In the perfect world we would like to live in, we would all have overlapping, completely sealed, air cooled, 600 watt HPS lights, free electricity, unlimited space… But we don’t.

The light footprint is twelve square feet, then walls and a door. No more no less. If I were to put thirty-six hundred watts of HPS over that small an area… I do not think this would have added weight, but I’m new to this. Let me explain…

My flower “room” is a closet with louvered doors, six feet wide by two feet deep by eight feet high. I use twelve, sixty-five watt CFLs in six groups of two, with the ability to raise or lower any of the six groups. There are five twenty-gallon storage tubs with two holes in each top for five-inch net pots. All tubs have air stones. Four of the tubs are connected to a common drainpipe with one shutoff valve, a garden hose adapter, and a sight glass. An aquarium pump to a header to top feed the eight plants. The last bucket holds water and Sugar Daddy with an air stone. No top feed is required at this point. This has been designed for two plants every two weeks of a strain of TW that we’ve cloned for four years (thanks Tim). This strain requires eight weeks of flowering and one week rinsing. (I almost overdid it with a WR/Kush cross that ran on this schedule, had to pull at seven and a half weeks with no rinse cycle but ready to die and dry) Take a look at floger's photos at the beginning of this thread.

The first three plants that went through this together yielded five and a quarter ounces, after drying and one week of curing. The largest bud was nine inches in circumference and twelve inches long. The WR/Kush is almost dry and two more get cut next Wednesday. Chuga-chuga can’t wait to get the whole thing in sync, from clone to cure.

Did I mention that from cutting to end of vegging, photons are provided by six twenty-three watt CFLs and I am using one small fan to transfer odor to attic in flowering area.

I’m laughing at those thirty-six hundred watts of HPS in a ninety-six cubic foot space with twelve square feet of floor space… Now that’s hot!

Thanks again to Organic Gardener, I will work towards becoming one of your favorites.

you're already up there I like the yield you're getting. My moms are under 200w of floro T8 and my veg cab is a 90w ufo with some cfl supplementation. flower is a 400w hps might bump that up to a 600 tho but my temps are nice and low so I don't even need to run ac.

One of my main goals is to give the photons the shortest distance to the chlorophyll and from many different directions. I could easily and inexpensively add five more groups of two bulbs, in between the existing six groups. That would change my bulb to plant ratio from 1.2:1 to 2.2:1 and the material costs would be less than $200.00. Operational wattage would increase from 780 watts to 1,430 watts yielding a total of 6,600 equivalent incandescent watts. Maybe tomorrow...