Does my UTH need a thermostat? What about Thermometers?

Very nice write up! :gj: I still think Ranco is a great thermostat. They can be set to 1 degree differential which I hardly consider inaccurate. I know they are made for HVAC but we have cold boxes at work which store Acetaldehyde. Ranco's control the temperature in the boxes. Acetaldehyde has a boiling point of 68 degrees and is stored in sealed containers. This means if a Ranco fails the containers stored inside would start exploding! :O

Thanks for posting.

Temp Guns measure glass just fine. They are commonly used to measure water temps, and you can measure water tank (aquarium) temps "through" the glass and see how much of a thermal gradient you have.

The Temp Gun is still taking the surface temperature of the glass itself, but the water and glass come to an equilibrium temperature, and the temp you read will be within a degree or two of actual.

Temp Gun variance with materials is related to Emissivity, and some esoteric materials do have a vastly different Emissivity than the standard 95E. Carbon, gold, mercury, all have wildly different E settings. If you have an adjustable Temp Gun, like our PE-2, you can change the E setting to account for that.

Once you set your unit to measure carbon though, it won't measure anything else correctly.

Your skin, your desk, the wall, glass, water, common liquids, substrates, basking spots, incubators, all your common reptile uses, the default 95E setting will measure them quickly and accurately.

Highly polished aluminum may have a different E setting, and you may see that if you try and measure the polished dome of a clip lamp, for example. But that E variance is also nullified if you just put a piece of scotch tape over the surface. BAM, back to 95E.

Sticky this!
This is an excellent write up. Thanks for posting this.

I agree this should be stickied.
I have heat cable or heat rope in the AP rack i bought recently. It works almost identical to flexwatt imo. It doesnt distribute the heat quite as well as flexwatt but not a big enough difference to make it a con imo. My snakes dont seem to notice a difference lol.

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Originally Posted by alittleFREE

Very nice, detailed and informative write up. Thank you for doing this.

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X2, thanks Aaron!

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

I agree this should be stickied.
I have heat cable or heat rope in the AP rack i bought recently. It works almost identical to flexwatt imo. It doesnt distribute the heat quite as well as flexwatt but not a big enough difference to make it a con imo. My snakes dont seem to notice a difference lol.

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Agreed. This post is an excellent start for a beginner. It gives them the core information regarding heating, thermometers and thermostats. Specific questions can then be asked in the forum.

Very helpful! Thank you! :)

Awsome Sticky i learned alot from this thank you :)

Why is this not stickied???