Unregulated Heat Sources - video demo

Really excellent demo that speaks for itself. (Also, I am yet another chiming in that I have the exact same temp gun. :P) When it comes to husbandry recommendations, some are optimal but not necessarily essential in a "budget" build, but this should absolutely hammer home the point that the thermostat is non-negotiable.

Really is pretty scary that's for sure,
This could probably end up burning your house down in the extreme cases if breakers fail,
Thanks for sharing

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I'm thinking I probably should have emphasized the fire hazard these can be, but I wanted to keep it pretty short and focused on the risk to the animal.

For the zoomed one especially of the 3 I tested there, if you DON'T give it an air gap (the manufacturer recommendation instead of a tstat) AND you don't use a thermostat, it is almost definitely going to cause a fire or at least smoke and singe the table or melt plastic.

The heat it would build up to without air to transmit heat away when on at full power would definitely build up and cause an electrical failure eventually.

I went to college for electrical engineering and while I'm not working in the field, I learned plenty to know exactly how risky this sort of electric-powered heating can become of used improperly, especially without any heat sink or other dissipation method in place. (This same thing is why heat sinks are so important on computer CPUs and why avoiding covering vents and fans on laptops when running intensive programs is so important.)

I love that temp gun. It was about $14 when I bought ita and unlike most reptile branded ones it uses a 1:12 ratio instead of 1:1. For anyone not aware, that means my gun measures a 1" diameter surface centered on the red dot when I am pointing the gun from 12" away.

For many of the ones sold by RBI and at specialty shops they are often 1:1 ratio (and twice the price) and measure that 1" diameter from only 1" away. So for anyone pointing the gun from the top of a tank, they're measuring (on a 20 long, let's say) a 12" diameter circle from 12" away. This may be bigger than the heat pad or even bigger than the cleared glass surface and adding cooler temps of the substrate surface around it and skewing the measurements. Even with a thermostat, if the gun is reading low and you keep kicking the temperature up, it can become dangerous like that as well.

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Saw this one Reddit earlier. Happy ending here, but not always the case and another reason why thermostats are important.

(In case the picture isn't legible) Firefighters were called to a smoking apartment where no one was home and rescued this corn snake. The owners had set up an unregulated UTH, set the cage on carpet where it began smoldering with substrate burning inside as well as the carpet beneath, this set off smoke detectors, and neighbors called it in.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...ba215c0f68.jpg

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