Looking good man. I've got a cfl grow myself with 12 bulbs giving me about 22,800 lumens. I've been trying to up the lumens as much as possible, but the heat has been a major factor. I've been trying to keep the room in range, but it's been hard and I've had to keep the door open and run fans while the lights are on. One thing that I think has helped is that I put a small computer fan hanging and blowing across the tops of the plants to keep the surface a little cooler (I'm doing a SCROG...). I've been able to run the lights as close as 1-2 inches withput too much burn. The closer you can get them the more lumens. That's about the main advantage I can find so far w/cfl's. I don't know if they cost any less really than HID when the bulbs that put out the lumens are like $10 each, so I've got about $150 in bulbs w/ the different colors I've bought. I guess you don't need the ballast and such , but the heat is definitely harder to control.
There are lumen calculators out there on the web and it's quite surprising to see how much you gain by close proximity to the plants. The cfl's have been great, but I may relegate my franken fixture to veg duties just because of the heat. I'm going to invest in an 400wHPS next time just so I can control the heat / odor better, but I may have to get it pretty close to match the lumen output.
Boss has some great posts on using cfls. also, so check out his grows if you haven't already. Good luck man and grow on....
