Quote Originally Posted by karmaxul
Because plants can be one inch to seven plus feet wide lets talk in terms of square feet. A son agro HPS is one of the most effiecent HID bulbs on the market producing 53,000 lumens at the core of the bulb. If we could take this core and make it into a big ball of dough then make a large pizza of sorts out of it not taking into account that lumens decrease per distance travelled like crazy. Are strange pizza core would cover at 10000 lumens per square foot 2.25 about square feet. You are all crazy. I can grow fine with using on average about a fraction of the lumens per square foot with use of a track. This is why production uses smaller plants with a thinner canopy. Yes 1500 is the recommended amount I would tell people to use. If any one can break down lumen decrease in regards to area and output feel free to tell this new cat why they should be wasting time and money on electricity, discouraging a motivated grower from not producing mother plants because they think it will cost them 3000 dollars a month to run a decent size grow. Neva my friend I can cover 100 square feet with 1000 watts using a track with no problems at all. thats 10 watts per sq foot. the average 1000 watt say has 113,000 lumens. If lumens did not decrease that would be 1130 lumens per square foot if you are skilled enough to make the magic pizza dough design, which I have only seen once high up in the Andes mountains, deep in a cave where the munchcin people live. Lets say because are lumens are travelling on average more 3 feet we can take that 1130 and make it 130 lumens per square foot. Some greedy growers who use chemicals for weight may not want competition, but I would like to see every street corner with a 4 foot mound of organic nuggets on it so I am going to accually teach you so you can grow.
great post!

Hello guys im new to the forum.

I used to grow under 400W HID's and MH's but that was turning out to be waay too expensive plus i was having trouble with the heat. I moved to argentina now and i just finished setting up my grow cabinet but this time im using CFL's (two 65 watt lamps as you can see below, combined about 5000 lumens i know im not gonna yield no where near like with HID's bit if i can get into a rhythm and flower a bush and replace with a vegged plant when i harvest i will be happy).

the size of the cabinet is 50cmx50cm (1.6ft squared at the base and height is just over a meter but i got my homemade reflectors which work pretty well about 2 inches from my plants as you can see the overhead is pretty dark so they are getting most of the light)

my question is, will this be enough to veg AND flower? or will i need to go to the hardware store and fetch some more CFL's???

seeds germinated and sprouted out from the soild, been under lights for a day and a half now.