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Pound for Pound...

How makes the best, in your opinion??

I need to replace one of my thermostats and am a little weiry of buying the same brand again because it failed to maintain my night time temps and was the cause of death ( possibly ) for two boas...

sorry... I 'm living in typo/grammar hell today...

Who makes the best?

Alot of this plays on what you want out of a thermostat.

MGReptiles has a comparsion sheet on this and is very good. I suggest reading it and the various information Matt has provided on his site about various units.

I read it from time to time just as a refresher, matt did a great job of providing solid information.

I actually have been thinking about the Herpstat II and its CPU link capability. While not mentioned on his comparison the abilty to check the tamps of my cages and adjust from any CPU with Interenet capability is a very interesting option I would consider a lot in my decision.

Good Luck

www.mgreptiles.com/

CPU Uploader

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Jeremy

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

1.1 Double Het "Sharp" Snow RTB's
1.1 Hypomelenistic RTB's
0.2 Pastel Hypo RTB's
2.0 Double Het Stripe Albino RTB's
0.1 Suriname RTB
0.1 Anerthrystic RTB
0.0.10 Red Bearded Dragons
1.1 Rhinoceros Iguana's
1.0 Green Iguana
1.0 Ball Python
1.1 Cream Golden Retrieviers
1.0 Pomeriaian
0.2 Catus Terribilis
0.1 Spouse
1.0 Child -coming soon-

Well Jeremy, not so sure I need something that high-speed, although, the ability to look at and adjust the tempuratures from online does sound appealing...

All I want is a realiable soundly built thermostat that will maintain the temps it was originally set at and not allow the temp. to drop to a dangerous level at night as my old one had in the past, the end result of two dead snakes, is trying to be obviously avoided again. I'm just kicking myself in the ass for not catching it earlier.

Alright lets start over;

What are you using for a heating device and what failed in the past?
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Jeremy

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

1.1 Double Het "Sharp" Snow RTB's
1.1 Hypomelenistic RTB's
0.2 Pastel Hypo RTB's
2.0 Double Het Stripe Albino RTB's
0.1 Suriname RTB
0.1 Anerthrystic RTB
0.0.10 Red Bearded Dragons
1.1 Rhinoceros Iguana's
1.0 Green Iguana
1.0 Ball Python
1.1 Cream Golden Retrieviers
1.0 Pomeriaian
0.2 Catus Terribilis
0.1 Spouse
1.0 Child -coming soon-

OK... Heating elements...

a) 20-30 gallon rated ReptiTherm UTH ( 20 watt approx)

and

b) a 75w infrared bulb in a equally rated reflective dome light pointed down at the basking site...

What I was using to what I thought control these two devices was a Helix DBS-1000 which I had bought from a friend who was getting out of housing herps around 3 months ago. I tested it fully before putting any animals into the enclosure, it worked fine.

I also had two probe thermometers inside the enclosure, one on the hot side, one on the cool side and was checking them periodically through out the day and the temps were normal for keeping BCI's... what wasn't normal however was the "bottom" dropping out of the device, allowing it to what I can only assume drop to a low enough tempurature to effect the snake. I had come home very late the other night... and I had left the enclosure set up to trouble shoot the problem, and found the cool and hot side temp to be 70 degrees at 2am. The drop I'm sure only compounded any under lying medical condition that snake may have had.. but I'm not 100% sure if he did have anything wrong with him medically... ( was acting like a healthy snake up until one week ago ) then he went down hill... took him in to get looked at... he died two days later...

I did test the thermostat seperately after that night and did find it wasn't maintaining the set temps.

Sorry for the length on this on there Jeremy...

Karl

Cage temps in the 70 degrees - what were the ambient room temps?

Where was the probe placed? Could it be hot there and not elsewhere in the cage? If the probe ws close to the heat source, it could give a false reading of hot while the actual cage was cold.

The test - plug your heat sources without any stat and what are the temps.

I'm NOT saying the stat was good but a thermostat can only do so much. A cold room will make it hard to regulate temps, as will a glass tank (you didn't mention enclosure type) Also probe placement is crucial and I believe it's not necessarily reccomended to power two differing heat sources with one stat.

>>OK... Heating elements...
>>
>>a) 20-30 gallon rated ReptiTherm UTH ( 20 watt approx)
>>
>>and
>>
>>b) a 75w infrared bulb in a equally rated reflective dome light pointed down at the basking site...
>>
>>What I was using to what I thought control these two devices was a Helix DBS-1000 which I had bought from a friend who was getting out of housing herps around 3 months ago. I tested it fully before putting any animals into the enclosure, it worked fine.
>>
>>I also had two probe thermometers inside the enclosure, one on the hot side, one on the cool side and was checking them periodically through out the day and the temps were normal for keeping BCI's... what wasn't normal however was the "bottom" dropping out of the device, allowing it to what I can only assume drop to a low enough tempurature to effect the snake. I had come home very late the other night... and I had left the enclosure set up to trouble shoot the problem, and found the cool and hot side temp to be 70 degrees at 2am. The drop I'm sure only compounded any under lying medical condition that snake may have had.. but I'm not 100% sure if he did have anything wrong with him medically... ( was acting like a healthy snake up until one week ago ) then he went down hill... took him in to get looked at... he died two days later...
>>
>>I did test the thermostat seperately after that night and did find it wasn't maintaining the set temps.
>>
>>Sorry for the length on this on there Jeremy...
>>
>>Karl
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

The air temp in the room was the same as the air temp in the enclosure... ( glass terrarium style with reflexit on the sides back and bottom ) ...

Probe placement is in the basking site... set for 95 deg. ( ambient temps away from the site stayed right at 82, right where I wanted them ) during the day and only a 5 degree drop for night time making the ambient night time temps 78ish... I tested all of these temps and verified them with a laser temp gun when setting up this enclosure.

I know for a fact the stat is bad because when I hooked the bad stat up to my other empty enclosure... it couldn't maintain the night drop temp... whatever happened to it, ultimately, the quality that Helix is putting out totally sucks now, which is too bad!

I'll keep you guys posted if I find anything else out...

oh... and the heat sources...

83 with just the UTH on...

103 with the heat lamp and the UTH on...

That's what I thought as well... the coils might have gone out in the UTH.. but nope... still working fine...

And to be honest... if I can't plug in 120 watts worth of energy into a device that's rated to 500 watts... what's the point of being rated to 500 watts??

Sounds like you're using the night drop feature and it's causing your problem. to be honest, I've never used it on mine. My room is heated and to get a night drop, I simply shut off the stat. While it can easily handle the wattage, I would think the two very different heat sources would not work well on one proportional stat??? Dunno for sure, just a thought.

>>oh... and the heat sources...
>>
>>83 with just the UTH on...
>>
>>103 with the heat lamp and the UTH on...
>>
>>That's what I thought as well... the coils might have gone out in the UTH.. but nope... still working fine...
>>
>>And to be honest... if I can't plug in 120 watts worth of energy into a device that's rated to 500 watts... what's the point of being rated to 500 watts??
-----
Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of having a seperate room in which I can turn into a micro climate for night time purposes. The only reason why I have the two connected to one stat is during the summer months it gets close to the hogh 80's and here recently, it is still getting well up into the low 80's during the day, and wanted to control both, so that I know, no matter how hot it gets, my basking temps will still stay 95 degrees.

that you are connecting two differently-applied heaters to one proportional thermostat. That is not a controlled system. One heater or the other will be unreliably holding any kind of setpoint.

Helix makes good stuff. I also know that any device can fail, but I've seen far more instances of user error (including in my own setups) than failed devices.

The best proportional controller in the universe will not work quite as intended connecting the heaters as you did. That is, one heater will not behave as intended, either being way too cold or too hot in some cases.

I suggest using the proportional only for one heater type (like bulbs of similar wattage) or the other (heat pads) or get another controller. And if you don't have the money for another controller, at least put a dimmer on the heat pad and forget trying to control it with the Helix while you are using the Helix to control the bulb.

MG reptiles sells a 2-channel device - separate proportional channels - in one unit (one outlet for each channel for the heaters.)