I want to go with a stanfield heat pad approx 3ftx2ft which would cover exactly 1/3 of my cage and the watts on this pad are 125. Is this too much. I don't want to melt the bottom lol. Oh, and stanfield also make a therm that plugs into the wall then the heat pad plugs into that allowing you to adjust temps from high to low so that should help too but I would still apprecciate some opionons.
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How much watts on a heat pad
Gray_Bandit
Jan 19, 2005 05:30 PM
Replies (1)
nhherp
Jan 20, 2005 10:48 AM
The pad turned on at full capacity is most likely much for the animal let alone the cage integrity. The rheo or therm will limit how many watts are used by controlling the current for how long thereby reducing worry of burning/melting cage, more importantly keeping from cooking an animal.
Wattage is a term used to describe how much current is used, not what is produced. The pad should have a listing of what temps will be produced at full capacity you will need to check this out. An example is.... some heat tape is 6 watts per foot, but will still reach temps of 150 degrees if not controlled, a 15 watt light bulb will not reach these temps. .
Rheostats only allow so much current, so you are not operating at a full 125 watt usage. Think of it as a water faucet for electricity. Whats open is what you get. You adjust the current until you find the place where X amount of current is consistently producing the desired temp. The drawback is that if the room heats up your cage will also heat up by that many more degrees.
Standard thermostats work by shutting on and off the full 125 watts in increments to maintain a desired temp. If your temp is XX degrees, and it drops 1 degree, the thermostat comes on and uses full current(125 watt) for Y amount of time(not long) to return temps to XX degrees.
PROPORTIONAL Thermostats are a sort of a combination of rheostat and thermostat. In that once full desired temp is achieved it uses controlled amounts of current to maintain the temps cosistently, not off and on. This is the best thermostat in my opinion and there are several manufactures of them. Check the caging forum for further advice.
