I currently have a very small veg room (18"x24") which has a 250W HPS in it for vegging and will eventually be used as a mother room.

Am I right in thinking that this could be replaced with a couple of 20W CFL lights which could then be used for rooting clones, supporting mothers and vegging... The best of all worlds!

If I just wanna a buy a CFL from B&Q or somewhere similar, how can I tell which CFL lights are blue spectrum and which are red spectrum?

Cheers

Mothers and rooting clones - just bog standard £1 CFLs will do the trick.

For vegging you want to keep that HPS.

funny i just bought 2 cfl's from B&Q today , look for the the 23 watt ones , they are the biggest i found, They are in a green box with energy saving tech on it ..These ones are rich in the blue spectrum . I use 2 of them plus 1 16 watt strip fluro for mums and babies . Works a treat for me although different strokes for different folks as they say

What I seem to have discovered with my 8 x 18 watt vegging light (18 watts per seedling) is it's nice and efficient for the first couple of weeks, but once the plant really starts growing, an intense light source 9 inches away hits more and more surface area. whereas the CFL 1 inch from the tops has to shine through the to top foliage to get to the lower leaves.

Because I'm a bit of an anorak, I may treat myself to a 70 watt HPS to see how they compare.

edit:-

looking at your Durban Skunk diary, I suspect you may be a bit timid with light intensities. In my experience you need to get the lights as close as possible.

[attachmentid=127661]

18 days from sowing the seeds directly into the compost.

£1...!!!

Awesome, now thats the sort of expense I can handle!!

Will it benefit me to put a couple of these in my flower room with my 600W HPS?
I heard that some blue spectrum light can increase the strength of the bud!!

Would I need loads of CFL's, so that they aren't completely over powered by the HPS?

I wouldn't bother adding fluorescent to HID - probably cause more trouble than they're worth.

My preference is one of these for mothers / cuttings :-

[attachmentid=127662]

(apologies for dying plants - I really should get a better photo.)

How high do you keep the 600 watt lamp above the plants ?

what happened to those ladies ????????

The 600W is about 2ft above the plants at the moment.

Is this too high?

They were reveggings done under my HPS lights - I changed my mind about keeping them around about when the photo was taken.

Nope - sounds fine according to the lighting efficiency sticky. And it's a balance between intensity and coverage in any case.

Looking at your space - it's like mine - a bit on the wide side ...

HID lighting rule in my enviro. Vegging and Flowering.

No reason whatsoever to use florries or change something that I know works for my projects and set-up.