temp help

just recieved my new rbi sweaterbox rack on friday. hooked it up to my ve-300 thermostat after work and have had it running all weekend. the heat tape according to my thermostat probe will not get above 88*. i have set my thermostat up to 105 and it will still not get any warmer. it is in an 80* room. what could be wrong?

I just wrote this on another post, trouble shoot your system,if you can get the probe, its not taped or glued down you can test the thermostat.

To test a thermostat put the probe in cold water, plug a lamp into the thermostat, and heat the water up, using a thermometer check the water temp when the lamp shuts off and compare it to the settings.

If the thermostat tests good turn the heat on, with a temp gun watch how the heat tape warms up.

A second test you might try is to plug the heat tape directly to the wall (with no snakes in the rack!) and see what the temp maxes at. If the T-stat is bad it will hit in the 120º range but if the tape is bad it will not heat up. Then you can start checking connections ect.

i moved my rack into the basement where it is 84* hooked my rack up directly into the wall where as before it was plugged into an extension cord. didnt know if maybe i was losing too much power through the long cord? now the unregulated heat tape is up to 94* after two hours. does that seem low to u guys? also tested the thermostat with a light bulb and it seems to be working properly

No, not really low it depends on the wattage and length long cords will drop the power quite a lot and it is a heater, are you using a cord that is medium to heavy duty or just a light duty one?

I like to have my heaters tuned just like your is so if the t-stat fails there is still no way your animals can be overheated to a terminal amount. Check with the supplier to see if that is a temp that he/she would expect.

You might try placing the rack back to its location and try the same with your cord you were using and check again. If you see a temp drop it might be line loss to the long cord. That combined with 4º room temp difference might be enough to cause the cooler than expected temps.

contacted rbi. they said that they just had another rack doing the same thing and think they might have had a weak batch of tape. they are sending me a new section today