Okay here is my new Glass tank setup with Pics

Looking good Firedoug
Question....are you using any CHE or heat lamp? what about the screen top - how do u have it covered?

Vypyrz,

Thanks for the reply... No I used velcro on the Acurite just for the reason you stated about the battery.



Gooli,

Thanks for the reply also and the praise. Not using CHE at this time, in fact the cool side UTH is off because the house is plenty warm during this heat wave we our having this week. Currently covering 80 to 90% with vinyl plastic sheeting from Wal-Mart's fabric dept. I have 3 pieces so I can vary the open/closed space as needed. Currently my outside RH is 18% here in SoCal and I am maintaining 65-75% in the tank. Snake is in shed right now. Prior to re-rigging my tank I was lucky to get the trank RH to 45% with an infrared heat lamp warming the hot side, snake was spending lots of time in his water dish. UTH has made a huge improvement with tank RH.

Doug

I went out and got the zilla thermostat as you did and hooked it up to my UTH.
I set it to 92 and let it sit for a day..after checking the substrate temp over the UTH i discovered two things:

1. the substrate was only at 87.
2. the red light on the thermostat wont even come on unless i turn the dial to 95 degrees.

did u experience something similar?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vypyrz

Did you hot glue or velcro the Accu-Rite unit to the side of the tank? Hopefully you didn't hot glue it. Changing the battery will be difficult. Otherwise , good job on that setup. I was trying to figure out why you would put straps on it. Then I noticed you were from SoCal... duh, earthquakes. Good forethought...


Rob

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wait your not suppose to hot glue, oh man i did on my accurite, should i go buy a new one?

Gooli,

I am not using the temp numbers printed around the adjusting dial on the zilla. What I did was I first plugged my UTH into the dimmers and I adjusted the hot side based on the reading that I see on my Acurite remote sensor glued to the the inside of my tank over the hot side UTH. Once I got this stabilized at 95 degrees, I double checked with my IR heat gun.

From here I plugged the dimmer cord with the UTH into the Zilla thermostat with the Zilla thermostat set in the fully on position(hottest) I then back down the thermostat until it cycles off power to the UTH. This is verified by the relay clicking and the light shutting off. My Zilla thermostat temp probe is glued to the outside and underside of the hot side UTH.

Once you do this you should be golden! The printed numbers on the Zilla case are more for a rough estimate in my oppinion, I don't think it wise to depend on them. Once I did this my hot side temp has stayed within .5 degrees of 95 degrees. I am very pleased with this setup. I may need to tweek it a little more come winter by increasing the power to the UTH by opening up the dimmer some.

The purpose of using the dimmer is a bit redundant, and provides a level of safety. With the power dialed down on the dimmer, the UTF is not capable of reaching the full potential of its output temp, whcih is near 115 degrees, so if the thermostat fails then that is as hot as the UTH will ever get. Plus I believe it is helping stabilize the temps by dialing down the ZooMed UTH output temps. This will cause the UTH to say on longer each cycle than it would if it were plugged directly into the thermostat, and it helps minimize the temp swings of an on/off thermostat.

The benifit of the thermostat is that it will cycle the UTH on an off to mantain the temp. as the ambient temp changes. I notice that in the morning my Zilla thermostat is running more and longer each cycle. Come later in the day and the SoCal heat, the Zilla Thermostat cycles less and for shorter times.

Hope that helps.

thanks so much...you have no idea how much this helps!
i was getting ready to throw in the towel.

i just got back from OSH with the dimmer and will try what you said.
one other question..what IR gun did u get and where?