repeated UTH failure on tubs. What am I...

...doing wrong?

I switched over to tubs about 6 weeks ago. Since then, I have had 4 UTH's fail. When I had glass tanks, I never had this problem - my UTHs lasted for years. I don't know what's going wrong.

Each 52qt sterilite tub has a medium UTH on the bottom. I'm using bark as substrate. Each has a good-sized, heavy ceramic water bowl in it, which is perfect for maintaining the humidity. The UTHs are connected to the thermostat, which is set for 85; I have a back-up rheostat attached as well. I initially tried small UTHs, but those did not get the temp up and stay consistent.

Now, the only thing that seems to be different with this set-up opposed to the glass tanks, is that now my snakes are dumping their water bowls. They are the same bowls they've had for years, and they never dumped the bowls in the glass tanks. I mean that literally; I will find the bowls completely dumped over and water soaking everything and driving the humidity up considerably.

My husband thinks that when they dump the bowls, the water pools on the bottom of the tub, it heats up and burns through the tub, which then shorts out the UTH. Admittedly, there are a couple of small holes in the bottom of each tub and subsequent scorch marks on the UTHs.

So, what am I doing wrong? It is getting expensive to replace all of these UTHs.

I am not sure if it is the water causing the problem or not, but to point out the obvious, are you sure your thermostat didn't fail?

I have used UTH's with Repti-temps on tubs without a problem. I currently have a rack with 4" Flexwatt and a Herpstat also without problems. And I have snakes that like to tip over their water, too.

Other then that.. I have no idea what could be the problem. :(

what do you mean there are holes in the bottom of the tubs, and scortch marks on the uths?

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Originally Posted by cinderbird

what do you mean there are holes in the bottom of the tubs, and scortch marks on the uths?

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I mean that literally. One tub (the UTH for this snake has failed 3x - the other has failed only 1x) has 3 tiny holes where it appears that the plastic has melted, and on the UTH, it looks scorched and fried under those holes - like something popped in those places. And then the UTH doesn't work.

I considered thermostat failure, but I've checked out the tub temps with a separate thermometer and probe to make sure the thermostat is working accurately. The thermostat is plugged into the rheostat which is plugged into a power control strip that regulates energy - it's the exact same set-up I had with my tanks; the only difference now is that my snakes are in plastic tubs.

I'm truly using the same set-up before except now I have plastic tubs. Could my sterilite tubs be bad?

Sounds like maybe temperature fluctuations. They get way too high, then low again. They burn through, and by the time you test the temp it's back to normal.

Maybe time to buy better UTH's or flexwatt heat tape (never had a problem with it).

Other than that, I have no idea. Sounds to me like water has nothing to do with it, they're spilling water for one reason: it's too hot, and water cools them off.

Hope that helps.

not sure what your using, but use cobra non-sticky heat mats, they are great or ultra therm, i think the bean farm sells them

what kind of thermostat are you using?

Heavier bowls can help too, if they are heavy crocks they will not knock them over as much.

Sounds to me like your problem may be the rheostat. You should have it 1) thermostat plugged into the wall 2) rheostat plugged into thermostat 3) UTH plugged into rheostat.

I would remove the rheostat and just use the thermostat and UTH to see if the problem goes away. None of my tubs have ever melted or burned up a UTH, and my heaters are coverd with a piece of polystyrene insulation. I think this may have been happening in your glass tanks if you were using the same set-up, it's just now you are seeing it because of the melting, which is why I think it is electrical...

How would the rheostat be causing something like this? The thermostat should still be cutting the power when the heat reaches the set point, regardless of anything else in the setup, unless the thermostat has failed. I'm obviously new and you're obviously way more experience, so I don't mean to usurp that authority, but it just doesn't make sense to me.

And, OP, water couldn't "burn" through anything. It would boil before it got hot enough to burn anything except a few choice chemicals. If it's leaking through the holes, it may be exacerbating the electrical problem that's already present.

I vote bad thermostat. How else could you get temperature spikes hot enough to melt plastic?