bye bye hps!!

One thing about your pic ozzy, face your fan more over the canopy of your plants. it keeps it cool where your plants are. you have your fan facing up at the bulbs but not at your plants. if its cool where your fans blowing its fine. dont worry bout sides or what ever. Facing it up actually directs hot air down twords your plants.

Good tip! Ill do that. Also I've decided to get a portable AC unit.... having a baseline ambient room temp of 78-80deg (mid day anyway) is just way to high to start with. Doesn't matter if its HID or T5 either way that's to damn high. I'm thinking a portable unit with a built in thermostate and set it to 70 deg. that should put me at around 80 - 82 degrees with lights on.

Also I re-routed the ducting for more efficient flow (got rid of the sharp bends). I'm going to run the T5's for better or worse. I LIke the even light coverage and with 50000 lumens within an inch to six inches of most of the buds, plus light sources from above AND the sides converging in the center of the grow area.... I'm betting I get good results. Time will tell. I popped three SS AK47 and a sweet tooth #3... here's to hoping for two or three females for my test run! Cheers!

Portable will def help ya! If you dont have a window to exhaust the ac out of (like me) you could vent it out if your grow room into the rest of ur basement. Im trying to figure out away to vent it out if my house without to many mods to my house. my ambient in the rest of basement is about 79 with the portable venting into it. Good luck I hear ak47 is bomb and t5 can give u amazing results

I think you will miss the density of the HID buds, but if you have cold winters you could always switch back and forth. use the extra heat to warm a hallway..goodluck with the t5's and dont be afraid to let it be a little warm. 85 is not really a dangerous temp. i say shoot for 80 inside the grow area.

If you are into modding?You can mount the ballast outside the fixture.Wether on fixture or higher in or outside the tent.If need to splice in wire do not go beyond 36" wire length each ballast wire(Except black&white power wires).

My experience with diy remote ballast pll's is that:A well circulated and heat sinked ballast will run cooler bulbs in above ambient temp enviroments.

I personaly would not flower a plant no more than 12" vertical vegatation height or 24" height with sidelighting and lower per plant density.

Properly grown floro meds,when cured are just as tight and sweet as hid grows.Remember to dial down the nutes by 25% because each plant is not going to receive the full blast of your watts,unless a single plant is completely sorrounded.

where is the heat coming from? the energy

watts in --> heat out

even those fans you are running generate heat

it doesn't matter if it's a 100w incandescent, 4 x 26 watt CFLs, or 100w T5, etc

cooling resources should be focused on ventilation

I got sick of dealing with the heat in my 4x2 4ft 8bulb tent. Sold the light today and now have a dedicated drying tent. Money from the light bought some super roots air pots. 5- .3gal, 5- 1.2gal, 5-2.4gal, and 2-3.4gal for moms. The reviews ive read show explosive healthy roots im excited to get my seedlings into them!