RHP and/or belly heat?

Ok, so I've decided to buy an AP T8 and have a newbie question. The unit I am getting will have a divider so that I can keep two BPs. I'm going to modify the divider so that I can centrally mount my Pro Heat RHP. Given that the T8 is only 12 high, do I need both the RHP and belly heat? I've read some threads that say you don't need both, but I've also read that BP's need belly heat to help with digestion. I'm not concerned about price (Flexwatt is not that expensive anyways), but want to make sure the setup is right.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

You don't need belly heat and you can just use 2x 40 watt RHPs, 1 on each side. No snake NEEDS belly heat to digest if the ambient temps are warm enough. I have never used belly heat on my 6ft BCI girl and I have had her since she was a 18" baby and she does just fine with a RHP in her Pro-Line HDPE cage.

Yep, no belly heat needed if your ambient temp is up to par. I personally keep my enclosures at 83.5 during the day and then do a night drop of 80 at night. The night drop isn't something that is necessary either. I'm just experimenting with night drops to see if it makes a difference or not.

I would mount the RHP panel either on one side or the other. That way you're creating a temperature gradient for the snake. A 80 watt RHP should be great for a T8.

I'm glad I seen this post as we are looking at getting the T10 for our female bee; we like the extra 3 inches of height for ease of cleaning.

So a RHP would be fine in the T10 as well without belly heat? We were looking at installing an 80W RHP in the T10 with belly heat but it sounds like this is not necessary.

Thanks!

You don't need both for sure only one heat source is needed. Both RHP and UTH are radiant heat sources so the work the same way, heating objects, just like the sun. Many RHP manufacturers suggest 12 inches from the face of the panel to the floor so a T8 is on the lowest installation possible.

RHPs are not the most efficient systems, they lose a lot of heat, to generate a hot spot on the floor of 90ºF mine has a surface of 130ºF my UTHs in the same thickness of PVCx to hold a 90ºF hot spot run 93ºF on the surface and then only are 11w compared to a 40w, so they use less power to do so. RHP excel at heating a perch and generating a horizontal and vertical gradient at the same time. A terrestrial gradient is great but remember you also have a vertical one so if the floor is 90º the top of the hide is hotter.

If you need to kick up ambient temps I believe there are more efficient, cheaper, and with less compromises methods of doing so. Heating objects to then heat the air seems a involved way of doing that just heating the air directly is easier. Fluorescent bulbs heat air , and the electronics associated with led strings also do. My suggestion is during your set up just use the lighting with no heat at all to see how much they heat the ambients (12hr white 12hr led night) you can add a RHP if needed but my experience the FL heats around 8-12º over the room my RHPs have only capped 3-4ºF over the room. (unless you stick the probe where the RHP will heat it directly... hardly ambient air temp then it is just a hot spot as it is directly influenced by the heater)

If this works it will save you money and power.


"Heating by radiant energy is observed every day, the warmth of the sunshine being the most commonly observed example. Radiant heating as a technology is more narrowly defined. It is the method of intentionally using the principles of radiant heat to transfer radiant energy from an emitting heat source to an object. Designs with radiant heating are seen as replacements for conventional convection heating as well as a way of supplying confined outdoor heating."

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Originally Posted by Stormy

I'm glad I seen this post as we are looking at getting the T10 for our female bee; we like the extra 3 inches of height for ease of cleaning.

So a RHP would be fine in the T10 as well without belly heat? We were looking at installing an 80W RHP in the T10 with belly heat but it sounds like this is not necessary.

Thanks!

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Yes an 80 watt will heat a T-10 easily. I'm using a Pro Products PH-3 which is their 65 watt in a Pro-Line 48x23x14 with a Herpstat 1 and I have no problem keeping it warm.

Since we live in Illinois and have terribly cold winters we're looking at being able to keep ambiant air temps up; we keep our house at 72 so you can see where we need to keep the snakes warmer. Right now all four snakes are in aquariums with heat lamps/belly heat (on a thermostat of course). Trying to keep humidity up this winter has been a lot of work.

So we're going to order a T10 and start with the female bee since she's outgrown her tank; the two males will be next then the other female. The plan at the moment is to order the T10, RHP from Reptile Basics and a Herpstat 4 :D:D

From what I have read you will not need both as long as your room Temps do not drop extremely low.

My question to you is how exactly are you planning on modifying the cage divider so that you can fit one rhp and make it heat both sides? I ask because I have thought about doing something similar but most rhp manufacturers recommend that no tank surface should be really close to the panel. I believe the reason for that was that it can overheat the internal components of the panel. I know it's not a huge surface maybe a 1/2 inch width of pvc going across the panel but I'm thinking will it be enough to overheat the panel? Or even cause it to malfunction? Let me know your plan and thoughts on it.

Great point BumbleB! I didn't take that into consideration. I guess I'm back to looking at Flexwatt.

Are you dividing the cage because you are going to keep 2 snakes in there? Or are you dividing it just to give a baby less space. If its answer 1 then just buy 2 40 watt RHPs and put one on each side of the cage. Then each snake will have their own RHP and you don't need to do anything to the divider. If its answer 2, then you don't need a divider as long as you provide a few hides for your baby so he/she feels secure moving around.

I would recommend trying a tube first I too run enclosures in a cold room, 68ºF is typical sometimes lower. The RHPs I have are never enough but the FL tubes always are, I have to change the timing of them during the summer when it gets warmer, they get the air too hot.

If the RHPs heated the air enough in your room and deliver a hot spot of 90ºF then anyone in a warmer home could not use them, if they too had a hot spot of 90ºF. Heaters heat consistently if one sort makes a large change to air temps in one set up it will make a similar change in a similar set up. They either run like a heat lamp and heat the air (and yes in an 80ºF room a heat lamp over heats the air) or they don't. If they do they always do they can't have a secondary effect in one place and none in another.

I have a friend whom heats a snake room to 80ºF and uses RHPs if they were to heat the air more than a few degrees he could not use them right?

Have you ever heard of anyone saying that room is too warm to use a RHP?

The more I read the more confused I'm getting:confusd: Sounds like some prefer RHP heat while others prefer Flexwatt; sounds like its just personal preference at this point.

I just want to make sure we're setting up a T10 correctly for our situation.

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Originally Posted by Stormy

The more I read the more confused I'm getting:confusd: Sounds like some prefer RHP heat while others prefer Flexwatt; sounds like its just personal preference at this point.

I just want to make sure we're setting up a T10 correctly for our situation.

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Honestly, go with the RHP. It's been proven to work many times over in PVC enclosures.

I'm really not sure what kitedeamon is talking about but if you decide to use RHP as a heating source, you'll do just fine. RHPs are used to keep proper ambient temperatures NOT to create a hot spot. If you needed to provide a hot spot (which you don't) you'd use an UTH. The whole point of this thread is to let you know that you DON't need a hot spot and that with proper ambient temperature your ball python will do great.

Like Mr Misha said, you definitely want a RHP. Ambient temp is more important since no snake NEEDS belly heat but all snakes do need a warm room. Plus if you do want to create kind of a hot spot, throw a flat dark rock on the floor under the RHP and that will soak up heat from the RHP and keep it warm. I used that method for a while on my big BCI girl but she didn't seem to care regardless so I took it out as it just make for another thing I had to spray down with Chlorhexadine and wash off every month when I do all the cage cleanings. I personally run a RHP with Herpstat in my HDPE cage and I run CHE on Herpstat in my 2 glass tanks and this is all in a 75F room and it keeps everything perfect. I don't use a UTH on anything.

What does RHP stand for?

Radiant Heat Panel

Radiant heat panel, exactly.

They call it that because it is a radiant heat source? Like the sun, or a fire. When I sit on a cold night in front of a fire my back gets cold and front toasts. This is how radiant heat works the radiation travels through the air and strikes an object and then starts to warm that object. It does not heat the air. A microwave works on the same principal, it heats objects not air unlike a convection oven that uses hot air to cook with. This is why radiant heat systems have been used in hockey rinks and out door cafes. Heating the air in such locations is a poor idea.

So you are using a heat system to try to heat air, that by the laws of heat transfer does not heat the air. You are then relying on secondary effect to alter the air temps, like adding a rock so the RHP heats the rock, and then that in turns heats the air. It is similar to heating stones in a fire outside and using the stones inside to heat the house. It works but is very inefficient.

Look at the temps, my RHP has a surface temp around 109ºF to heat a perch to 85ºF the room is cool around 68ºF and if all the secondary lighting and such is off I have 72ºF. It takes a lot of power and costs a lot initially for a very small increase. It is easy to try a inexpensive system first (lights as I mentioned before) to see how well they work on their own. My lighting in total costs only 14$ to buy and a few cents a month to run.

RHPs are ideal to heat raised surfaces. I use them in my Green tree enclosure it heats the raised perch perfectly allowing the floor to be cooler. I have a hot spot that is top to bottom, and left to right. This is not typically how you want them to be used in a terrestrial set up. The warmest object should be at the floor level not elevated.

The belief that an rhp heats air stems from placing a thermometer under the heater, it emits IR radiation that then heats the probe and presto air is heated. This is also why wild claims like it heats 20ºF over the room come into play, but the funny part of that is when the room temperature changes the same person with the same RHP in the same enclosure says it only heats 10º or less.

No heater can hold a constant temperature and vary a secondary at the same time. It is impossible.

If they were such efficient air heaters would they not be called convection heat panels?

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Question, does an RHP make a significant change to the relative humidity?

The rhp makes it easier to manage humidity but I only have experience with it and not heat tape. I move my water bowl closer to the rhp when I need more humidity for shedding and then away from the rhp when less humidity is needed.
My rhp is on the right side mounted to the ceiling. I use a herpstat to control it. I mounted the herpstat probe to the cold side and adjusted the heat to get the temp I want on the cold side. My enclosure is a custom melamine that I built.

If you are going to house in an enclosure and not a rack then I would say a rhp is the way to go.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/15...1a96492fbe.jpg

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Originally Posted by Firemaniv

The rhp makes it easier to manage humidity but I only have experience with it and not heat tape. I move my water bowl closer to the rhp when I need more humidity for shedding and then away from the rhp when less humidity is needed.
My rhp is on the right side mounted to the ceiling. I use a herpstat to control it. I mounted the herpstat probe to the cold side and adjusted the heat to get the temp I want on the cold side. My enclosure is a custom melamine that I built.

If you are going to house in an enclosure and not a rack then I would say a rhp is the way to go.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/15...1a96492fbe.jpg

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On the left side of the picture is that the thermostat probe? If so how do you have it secured?

Yes it is and I stapled it to the wall. I used longer staples and made sure they went all the way in to the melamine. Also use a staple gun with a wire guide if you choose to try this. I had to install cable track for the cords for lights and that would work as well to run the probe. You would just have to have the end sticking out. This month is my 1 year anniversary for my enclosure and so far it has worked well other than having to add the cable track so my BP would stop playing in the light wiring, lol.