Reptile & Amphibian Forums

just a quick question. the warm side of my snakes home needs to be mid 80's correct. i have the under tank heater on one side but when i plug it in it warms it up to around the mid to high 90's and even over 100. i know this is too hot. the other side is room temp which is around 72-74. my question is, is it easy to maybe put a dimmer on the heat pad or is there another way of regulating the temp?
thanks
eric

You may use a dimmer. Electrically this is fine. The real problem with dimmers is they do not make the heater get cooler as the air temp rises; the heater gets warmer as the ambient air temp gets higher for the same dimmer setting. This means you have to adjust the dimmer setting often.

A better method is to use a thermostat. This way, you have control from overtemp conditions.

Porportional controllers like Helix and Big Apple Herp Power are great devices but cost $100 or a little more. You can use a cheap analog T-stat for $30.00. Bean Farm sells them as does many other places. You'll need to fix the probe of the contoller to the heat pad or lay it on the heated area.

Good luck.
-----
Mark G

Animals:
A few Rosy boas, mountain kings, Cal kings and Children's pythons.

Caging:
Visionariums, Herpcages.com, Precision, 5 gal tanks for babies.

the only problem i have is that the undertank heater is just getting wat to hot for me. its at 101 right now. but if i were to unplug it it would drop to the room temp which is not warm enough for the warm end. im not too worried about the cooler end to be at room temp on the cool end. and not really worried about night time. just worried about the day time.