Hello just read your post and I can see what you are saying with regards to the issue of CFLs, I have used CFls for vegging and found they worked brilliantly so I scrapped my HID lamps, I also switched from HID on the flowers to flourescent tubes I used Phillips MASTER TL-D Reflex 36W/840 tubes (warm red tubes) built into an array of 8 tubes per light I used 2 light arrays (16 x 36w) for a total of 576w Best yield I had was with Ak 47 @ 732g.

The beauty with these tubes is that you can have the array positioned to the point that it is touching the plants, when you factor in the inverse square law and how far you have to position a HID lamp away from the plant plus the fact that those Master Reflex tubes are in a better suited spectrum to plant growth (hardly any yellow lots of red per se HID) then maybe you can understand why they work.

I always found that the tubes need a run in, on new tubes 2nd crops tended to be better than 1st ones, and tubes should be replaced every 6 crops, but as they are cheap enough to buy, produce very little heat (no detection worries) and yield very well on that basis I would never use HIDs again.