Metal Halide vs Fluorescent?

Does anyone know the equivlent lumens to a 400W MH to fluorescent bulbs? A T8 or something?

I have 3 - 400W Metal Halide lights vegging 36 plants. Heat has been an issue, Im wondering if theres a way to switch the MH bulbs to fluorescent but keep as much light on the plants. Id probably have to switch the hoods too?

ZerocoolSmith said:

Does anyone know the equivlent lumens to a 400W MH to fluorescent bulbs? A T8 or something?

I have 3 - 400W Metal Halide lights vegging 36 plants. Heat has been an issue, Im wondering if theres a way to switch the MH bulbs to fluorescent but keep as much light on the plants. Id probably have to switch the hoods too?

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t5 would be ur best bet man ho bulbs will do 5000 lumens per bulb but u wont get mh light unless u use mh bro maybe a small inline ?

You get more lumens per watt with hid (mh or hps).

Power in equals power out. If it's not making lumens, its making heat. So fluorescents make more btu/hr per lumen than hid even if they seem cooler, there is greater surface area and more watts are required to provide equivalent lighting.

Air cooled reflectors with a nice centrifugal blower extracting some of the hid btu could help.

some 16 in wall fans wouldn't hurt.

turn on that a/c you have in the corner. I run one in my 5x10 tent with 2x600hps. I run consistent 75* lights on and 73* lights off temps.

I have 2 ac's in the veg room.14,000 & 7000 btu. Doesn't do the trick. The problem is the ambient temp outside the room (garage) turns into an oven. The 2nd ac in the room cancels itself out by adding exhaust heat into the garage. Temps in the garage get to 112F. Even when nothing is running the garage gets to 99 degrees. Huge heat wave out here is the main problem. At night the temp is fine. I don't want to funnel 112F hot air out of the garage, dozen police helicopters over me daily.

I guess it'd be more cost effective to fix what I have. I'm going to take one of the ac's out of the veg room and put it in the window of the garage and cool the whole garage down.

(Ps. Room is insulated and sealed and I tried adding exhaust fans. Didn't help. Summer is gonna be the hardest time to grow.)