Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Designing a new room for my ball pythons, I'm going to use back heat, and will be building two racks for them (one for adults 28quart sterilite tubs, and one for babies shoebox 12 quart). Each will be 10 tubs high and two tubs wide, I'd like to use a single theormostat with 10inch wide heat tape for the larger tubs and only 3 inch heat tape for the smaller tubs. This is where my questions is, can I combine the two different size heat tapes and will this work? Thanks for the feedback...

Further info to avoid questions, I'm using back heat as the ambient room temp is 82 with other boa and monitor cages emmiting heat into the room. Thanks again for the help.

The odds are against that being that one has a higher wattage than the other.
For example,if the probe for the thermostat is reading from the 4" then the 11" would be hotter.If the probe is reading from the 11" then the 4" would get to cold.
-----
3.12 Ball Pythons
0.1 Mutant Thayeri

The three inch heat tape gets hotter than the 11 inch so you are not going to get any degree of accuracy combining the two on one thermostat.

George Knaack
GLK HERP

Wire them separately. Put an inline dimmer switch (aka a rheostat) on both heat tape strips, and adjust them until they are both reading in the range you want.. Going this route will allow both to operate off of the same thermostat.

Later
-----
Randall L Turner Jr.
www.aircapitalconstrictors.com