haha if its all you can afford?? the good t5's aka 54watt ho are like 440 and up for the 8 bulb.. same price as most other lights out.. i had to come out of pocket to get a room full of themT5's are great, i use them my self, they are more powerful then a CFL in my opinion, in the sense that they tend to grow better crops, (by themselves)
They can be used for seedling veg and flower, BUT HPS will always do better in the bud production area, but if T5's is all you can afford next to CFLS they will do a damn decent job for the price, not too menction you can put alot of them together and with the right strain and nutes and care can pull off some dank shit.
i my self have grown purp kush with T5's and they have done great.
I am looking to get a t5 400 watt 8 bulb fixture. I hope today. I am running it over 4 plants or so and the mothers and some cloning. In a 4x4x6 tent. Right now I am running a 600 watt mh and before that I had a 400 watt mh. I like the lumens of the 8 bulb for the watts plus I was thinking that I did not need a lot of supprot equipment. As in hood and fan combo. Now I read that the heat is just as bad. I was so stoked on the deal I found I forgot to rmember that. Stoners. Anyway, how bad is the heat? Is it like a 400 or less. Do you just drop a tube next to it? Or are you just exhausting the whole room for that big a setup?
they don't put out THAT much heat.. the heat is spread out evenly coming off each bulb, I have ran 6 of the 8 bulbs in a 15x10 room with no ac and it was fine, never got over 84 with a exhaust and fanssounds like a nice set up. Its a real bummer to hear that the T5's put out that much heat.
The main reason I wanted T5's was to keep my room cooler and run less watts. I might have to re-think my lighting a little, or atleast look into the T5's a little more.
As far as the exhaust question I would personally vent the whole room, if your fan is big enough I dont think you should have a problem.
Thank you for everyones quick replies you've really help at answering the question and helped bring up some new ones.