New Grower - Needs lights advice

Hi all, new to the forums here and new to growing.
I am planning a medical crop and am trying to pull things together in advance of 'building the grow rooms'.
For seedlings/cloning, I have a pair of 65W/500W 4U CFL floodlights (man these are bright), for the moment I am happy with these.
For veg/flowering... hmm....
I live in farm area and can get 600W high bay MH units (ballast/reflector/bulb) for $25 second hand, and 400W HPS units for $15 each. These have been pulled out of old barns/stables.
I have read that the advice is to go to new as soon as you can so that you dont have failures during crop time, etc. But.... Limited cash at the moment.
Would these lights do? I have access to 10 HPS and 6 MH.

The 'rooms' will be small, with a growing area about 4ft sq. My thoughts were to use one MH and one HPS in the veg room and two HPS in the flowering room. This wouls leave me lots of 'spares' if anything happens. I was also going to extend the cord between ballast and lamp so that i can position the ballasts outside of the room.

Any advice??

Thanks

 

Random thoughts... Find one of ranger Danger's threads where he talks about lumens per square foot. I don't recall the formula or ratio anymore, but you need to have enough light of the preferred spectrum without unduly enriching the power company. Don't forget about heat dissipation, MH in particular cranks out a lot of BTUs, so plan for a decent heat and also odor exhaust .
BUY A GOOD GROW BOOK!!
Great price on the used units, but loose lips sink ships. What kind of cover story have you concocted for the farmer you're buying these units from? He probably isn't stupid. I've read a few things about hps and mh lamps loosing some of their oomph over time, but I really haven't seen anything definitive. Sometimes I wonder if it's the bulb salesmen telling you why you gotta buy new bulbs now; kinda like realtors telling you why NOW is the best time to buy or sell.
Hows your electricity? You got enough circuits of proper amperage? Just read in the local paper about somebody who set his house on fire, after the firemen had their way with him, the cops came along and busted him for growing Hydroponic marijuana with a street value of 68 gazillion dollars... maybe 4 plants. It's almost worth it to sell weed to those soldiers of the war on drugs if they're really going to pony up that kind of cash.
If you've done this sort of thing before, go with quality seeds, if you're dabbling go slow and learn on bag seeds.
Good luck

 

2 400 watt HPS in 4 sq. feet would be a bit excessive, and create a whole lot more heat than what you really want. One would do the trick nicely. The ballasts outside of the room is a good idea, because they put off quite a bit of heat themselves.