Well I got the crappy open reflector so the heat is present, but not as bad as the open reflector 400W MH I had a while back...It's not unmanageable. If you were to toss that in a closed reflector with a shitty 30$ inline vent fan from Lowes or HD then the heat would be a non-issue unless you had a tight closet grow...The color is awesome. I just set up the rooms last night finally (been busy) and lit them up for the first time...Satisfying color temp when you see it...The base 250W or 400W MH or HPS from HTG is 119, it seems worth the extra 60 for the CMH. If anything I could see the CMH giving you a even better veg, and help with increasing viable bud sites. I have 1 400W CMH, flanked with a 240W and a 500W blackstar covering about 24 square feet of growing space. The total draw is about 830 with the fan on, and that replaces a 1000W hps. I get to bank 170W, have a fuller light saturation and a fuller spectrum offering as well. The LED's take care of flowering processes and trich production, the CMH bolsters those plant processes while minding the ever present vegetative and photosynthetic processes. (also tosses some UV as well to compliment the UV output of the LEDs)...
At least thats the plan...we'll see...
I'm just trying all kinds of shit out...My fav to date has been mixing the LED's and my 7200K MH...
Still your grow here is impressive in itself...I'd say picking up a small to mid size HID couldn't hurt. I read on here that CMH grows should have the Pro-tek (sp?) from dynagro as a silica additive. Not sure why, but its cheap so whatever...
dude i think the cmh is a winner...hows the heat compared to hps