AP Rack: Side-mounted flexwatt?

Hello everyone!

I was fortunate enough to trade a couple enclosures today for a used Animal Plastics CB70 7 level rack this afternoon. After deep cleaning and disinfection, I plugged it in to make sure the heat tape worked and everything seems to be in working order. However, the flexwatt is side mounted, and with the tubs in the rack, I'm having issues getting my temperatures high enough. The flexwatt does not have contact with the tubs themselves, and is just bringing up the ambient temperature. I had it on a thermostat at first, but the ambient temperature wasn't high enough so I now have it running without the thermostat on it.

I checked about a half hour ago and the temperatures are still low. Is there any solution for this other than moving the rack into a room with a higher ambient temperature within itself? Anyone dealt with this before?

Thanks!

What is the temperature of the room? Unless it is 75 degrees or above you are going to have issues overall.

What are you using to measure temperatures? And what are your current temps?

I strongly advise that you hook the thermostat back up. It is a huge safety risk running heat tape unregulated.

The room temperature is about 70 degrees. I'm using an infrared temp gun to take temps. I currently do not have any animals in the rack, which is why I have the thermostat disconnected just to experiment with the temperatures. I've always used individual enclosures/smaller racks with belly heat that the ambient temperature didn't affect so much, so this is a little new for me.

But it sounds like I may have to bring it into a warmer room!

Your temp gun might be giving you bad temperature readings. Remember that temp guns only measure surface temperatures. They cannot measure air temps. It might take a lot longer for the side heat to get the surface temps up.

I've been taking temperatures of the surfaces (sides and bottom) as the heat tape doesn't have direct contact with the bins. The surface temperatures of the sides are hitting about 90 degrees and the bottom about 80.