Uneven rack temperatures, flexwatt

I have one strip of flexwatt running down my rack. About 30 inches. The top tubs are a full 5 degrees hotter than the bottom tubs. What gives?

Anyway to fix this difference or is heat tape just that inaccurate. Makes it very hard to pick and set a temperature!

You may need to play with the location of the probe. Most find the tubs around the middle give the most uniform numbers.

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Originally Posted by KMG

You may need to play with the location of the probe. Most find the tubs around the middle give the most uniform numbers.

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That's a good point. But I guess it will still be semi uneven but would definitely help even it out. Still will be little hotter on one side and colder on another. Is this normal for flexwatt?

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Originally Posted by maskedburito

That's a good point. But I guess it will still be semi uneven but would definitely help even it out. Still will be little hotter on one side and colder on another. Is this normal for flexwatt?

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Yep. Normal in a rack.

temperature on bottom tubs will be cooler than top heat rises it is cooler near the floor

Yup. If you have species that prefer cooler temperatures like BRB and such put them nearer the bottom and put the more heat loving species at the top. In the end though a few degrees isn't going to make a big difference either way.

Kind of stinks that it's uneven. Mine is off from 5 degrees from bottom to top! Big difference for certain species I have but oh well. I think it's mainly the heat rising issue. But do different strips end up having power distributed differently or luck of the draw? Any way to mitigate this? I guess buy more snakes that need lower heat!

Individual strips of heat tape have power distributed evenly as far as I know. Its just the heat rising that causes the majority of the difference. The only solution really would be better insulation I would think but in a rack I don't know how you would go about doing that.

I don't know what species you keep specifically, but generally species have a range of temps that are acceptable. So what I do is set the temperatures so that the tubs at the top are near the hot end of that range and the ones are the bottom are at the cool end of the range. So even though the rack as a whole has a 5 degree difference from top to bottom, the snakes are all still at an acceptable temperature range.