A lot of small bulbs or a few large ones?

Here's a question. In the new box I'm building I have a few options for what wattage bulbs I can use. In all I have 8 sockets. I had a box with 6 sockets once and had all 26w cfl's. Temps were usually around 95 during the summer when the house was around 70-75. So I can do all 26w bulbs or less and leave some sockets empty. I can also use 42w bulbs which I have noticed tend to stay a bit cooler. I think the built in cooling fan works a little better in those. I also have that 65w (300w equiv.) but it blocks one socket so it essentially takes up two sockets. I could also do two 65w and four smaller bulbs or even three or four 65w. I'm thinking about trying four of them but am not sure how the heat will be (better or worse than 6-8 smaller bulbs).

The 23w are usually around 1600 lumens
The 42w 2750 or so
The 65w 3900 lumens

I have heard adding the lumens from all the bulbs is misleading. One 65w may be better than two 42w. Is this correct? Would four giant honkers be better than eight smaller ones even though the total lumens is less?

If you know how lumens work when considering multiple bulbs then please help. I want to really pump them full of light while still keeping temps down. The room is usually between 75 and 80 degrees, leaning towards the higher end. Once fall begins though it will be much better.

I wonder this myself I've heard 1 65w is better than 3 23's due to heat though...

But would one 65w put out more heat than 2 smaller ones? They have a huge cooling fan inside them.

...idk if this answers your question....but, you cannot stack lumens....meaning, if you have 5, 23 watts w/ 1600 lumens each....you only have 1600 lumens to spread evenly throughout...you donot have 8000 lumens. If you have heat issues w/ cfl, you might want to get a better exaust system. Most people grow w/ cfl because they cannot deal with the heat of a HID.

You could also remove the ballast from the CFL's, the base just pops open right below where the bulb begins. Since most of the heat comes from the ballast just open up your bulbs and extend the wires to the spiral bulb part allowing you to take the ballasts out of your grow. Good luck and happy growing!
Chillums

My new plan is to build a decent box with a 75w hps from Lowe's. You can dismantle it and put the ballast part outside of the box like chillum was saying. It's too late for the cfl's. I've already put it all together and rebuilding it to house the ballast part outside the box would take forever. Thanks for the feedback on the lumen issue. I knew it was something like that. So more light give more coverage but not more lumens.

jebus2029 said:

So more light give more coverage but not more lumens.

Click to expand...

...correctamundo.

I have 3 26w and 2 42w and so far my plants are doing fine. I keep them all bunched up and close together, yet i have no heat issues. My exaut fan is directly above my lights. I would suuggest using 2 or 3 42watts and the rest 26watts.

put the biggest bulbs you can find in all your sockets why do 4 65 watt when you can just put 42 watt bulbs in all 8 of your sockets( i read that the 65 watt covers two sockets thats the only reason why i diddent say to fill it up wit 65 watt bulbs). and the removing the ballast thing is pritty cool but i would not trust it just dosent seen safe you could burn your house down cus you were trying to keep the temp down in your grow room try explaning that to your incurance adjuster. just put extra intake and exhaust fans in your room.

I had it on all day and the temp was 99 on the thermometer transmitter. While the cheap $1 basic thermometer was around 95 I think (but also a few inches lower). I took out the 42w GE bulb because it had the hottest base. Their cooling fan sucks. The 40w sylvanias barely get warm on the base so I put in two of those and took out two 26w cool white and one 26w daylight. So now I have one 65w cool white, two 40w cool white, and one 26w daylight. The temp got up to around 95 on the transmitter thermometer and I didn't get a chance to check the cheapo before the lights went out. Tomorrow I'm going to try taking out the 65w and putting in one more 40w and see how that does. Then it will be the same as how I had my old box, which was usually high 80's, but sometimes got as high as low-mid 90's. House temp is usually 75-80 so until fall comes that's about the best I can do.

I also have 2 fans in the box for circulation. One 12" fan that blows hard and a squirrel cage fan that isn't as strong. Both just stay pointed straight up at the lights.