CFL Light Question

I'm about to build my light housing here in the next day or two. I was originally going to set up eight 26 Watt CFL lights on 4 Y adapters on a single fixture. After doing some reading some people have said that you benefit more if the lights are placed side ways or perpendicular to ther plants rather pointing down at them directly. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Where is most of the lit surface area of the bulb?

Well that's for side lighting which would be beneficial but I'd say point them down. If u wanna add some side lighting go ahead. It'll increase ur yield a bit.

I like the sound of bigger and yields together in the same sentence! Thanks for the feedback!

No prob man.. Good luck and stay safe. What strains u got?

Side lighting with cfl's is a must imo. You need to give the sugar leaves light which feed the buds and make them really bulk up. Cfl's simply dont have enough penetration to just do with top light.

Pointing the bulb down... which means only a small amount of direct light from the bulb gets to the plant.

Think Mr Garrison's voice from South Park CFLs are bad, um-k

Anything CFLs can do, leds can do better, longer, without being toxic to the environment

I have been replacing all my cfls with leds, and showing results in my thread

This goes for my HOT5s too. Just bought 4 @ 23w led tubes http://www.atgelectronics.com/tube/E58i-LED-Tube-(HO-Version).html

Here's a couple pics. #1 is vegging clones under one 22w LED, #2 was taken yesterday

From my experience with CFL bulbs, I would say sideward throws out more light, and reflectors make a difference along with proximity, side lighting, and bottom lighting with reflectors; I don’t use reflectors on the lamps that hang between the plants.

So just to clarify lamps above the plants lay flat and have reflectors, lamps between the plants hang vertically without reflectors and lamps underneath the plants lay flat with reflectors; I lay reflectors on top of the pots and sit lamps on them.

PetFlora said:

Think Mr Garrison's voice from South Park CFLs are bad, um-k

Anything CFLs can do, leds can do better, longer, without being toxic to the environment

I have been replacing all my cfls with leds, and showing results in my thread

This goes for my HOT5s too. Just bought 4 @ 23w led tubes http://www.atgelectronics.com/tube/E58i-LED-Tube-%28HO-Version%29.html

Here's a couple pics. #1 is vegging clones under one 22w LED, #2 was taken yesterday

View attachment 2697441View attachment 2697442

Click to expand...

How much did you pay for those tubes?