thermostats

I have been looking over the thermostats and need some help.
I have several (12?) racks to heat, all already wired with flexwatt tape, and have plugs.
How do I connect some thermostats to this? And can I hook more than one rack to a thermostat or do I need one for each?
I have nature's spirit snake shaks, and some of boaphile's sweater box style.
Any ideas? Links to explanations?
Wolfy

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

I have been looking over the thermostats and need some help.
I have several (12?) racks to heat, all already wired with flexwatt tape, and have plugs.
How do I connect some thermostats to this? And can I hook more than one rack to a thermostat or do I need one for each?
I have nature's spirit snake shaks, and some of boaphile's sweater box style.
Any ideas? Links to explanations?
Wolfy

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12 racks, WOW, wish I had that many!! Anyway, how many shelves per rack? I usually use one thermostat per rack, but you technically could use for more than one as long as you dont exceed the wattage of the thermostat. Some premade thermostats come with a power strip to plug your heat tape into, but if each shelf has a plug and you have more than 5 or 6 shelves that wont help. I wire my heat tape in a series starting from the bottom to the top with the plug being at the top. This way I only have one plug per rack to plug in, but you could also wire 2-3 shelves together per plug. I like having one thermostat per rack because you can adjust temps on certain racks and it wont effect the others.

You can use one thermostat to control several racks as long as they have the same heating element, same setup(belly vs back heat) and are needing the same temps. I usually run 3-4 racks off of one thermostat as I dont like having the entire room on one thermostat just becaue I feel it is to much.. I would also use a different thermostat between the differnt brands as they can differ in material denisity..