Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have some animals in an AP rack system, and i woke up this morning to find them all at 75 degrees. it is heated with the heat cable they provided, and regulated by a herpstat ND. long story short, after ruling everything else out, i have figured out that the cable must be faulty/no longer working. does anyone have experience with heat cable that might be able to tell me the first things to look for to figure out why they stopped working? i took the plug assembly and everything seems fine there. also, i ran my hands along all of the exposed cable to check for kinks/damage and could find none.
any help would be greatly appreciated.

jason

I use exclusively AP racks & have had this happen a couple times befor. Get a hold of AP for a replacement, they have always been good with me about it.
It looks like you've done every thing right makeing, sure it's not kinked or twisted when installing. I would check at the spots were the cable changes directions from horizontal to verticle (vise versa) that the angles are not to sharp of a 90 degree angle. This possible could cause a kink at that point.
Once you've remove the old cable, inspect it very closely. I had one cable go out & all I could find on it was a tiny hole that was in one of the corners were it would go up to the next shelf in the rack. I'm talking pin head size hole. I don't know if this was caused by to sharp of an angle or possibly a rat some how got it's nose up there & took a bit. The cable did go out hours after feeding time.
Another possibility is there's a spot that a tub could have been rubbing against the cable & eventually creating a worn spot on the cable. Look over the tubs for any sign of burning.
There are lots of other possibilities. AP will give you more help then I can. Good luck.

thanks for your response... yes, i am baffled as to what the problem might be. my rack had served me fine for over two years, and suddenly... nothing. i guess i'll have to give ap a call on monday. they were great in helping me get the thing in the first place. top notch customer service. anyhow, i guess i can just thank the stars that this happened in august and not the dead of winter. i guess i'll be sweating here for a couple of days.

HI,

Heat cable is dated. AP now offers most of their racks with Flex Watt. They have had a lot of problems with heat cable. Unfortunately you can't really use flex watt now with the heat cable set up.

Good luck,
Bill
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0.1 Spider Het Albino
1.0 Albino
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2.1 Super Pastel
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