I just finished building my second rack and installed the 3 inch flexwatt and did the crimp connections myself. I plugged the tape in w/out thermostat ( no animals in bins ) to make sure that it worked right and I got a huge difference in temps between shelves. After 1 hour of heating the top shelf was only 92 deg., middle was 102 deg and the shelf directly under the middle was 110 deg!!! I am assuming there is a wiring/crimping issue here. Has anyone had this problem before?
Thanks
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flexwatt problems....
wisema2297
May 03, 2006 12:06 PM
Replies (2)
Nokturnel Tom
May 03, 2006 12:38 PM
This is not an easy question to answer....but let me tell you this. I have a 6 foot shelf for containers and when checking my 6 foot length of flexwatt the temps varied at different points of the strip. I think many of us may actually see what you are seeing if we checked all of our individual shelves. I would plug it into a thermostat and start experimenting where the probe seems to best suit the temps you hope to have for your snakes. I have only had problems with flexwatt when run off of a dimmer switch. Once I started using thermostats things are much more constant and also safer, but I still check my temps often for a variety of reasons. It is an extreme difference from shelf to shelf in your case, but try it with a thermostat and see if they don't get closer to all being around the same temps. If there's heat on all of them, then I do not think that recrimping the strips may change the situation but I am by no means an electrician,,,,but experimentation with things like this usually proves much more effective results in the long run. Hope this helps Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com
zach_whitman
May 04, 2006 10:21 AM
pain in the but.
You didn't say how your flexwatt is run. Is it one strip that winds down the whole rack or is it a new strip with separate conections on each shelf. Are they all plugged into the same source?
Sometimes you just need to take apart the conections and redo them a few times. I think that those little clips don't work so great and even though they pierce the plastic they barely make a connection with the live wire underneath. If I were you I would take it apart, tug, pull, bend, and crimp the hell out of the connectors to try and get a better connection. And if all else fails try the soldering method.
Cheers
