had power outage..

My incubator is heated by flexwatt, hooked to a Helix proportional..
Yesterday, I was on lunch at a restaurant with my coworkers. Suddenly the power went out.. my stomach sank. I am on the same power grid as the restaurant.. It was out for about 20 seconds. Just enough to shut off/mess with all of my fish tank filters.. grr..
Well, I got home.. all of the digital clocks in the house were blinking. So, I walk over to the incubator.. it looks as if nothing ever happened!
Is there a battery in it that stores the temperature settings or something? I am not electronically inclined and realize that this is more of a thermostat question, but I was so relieved to know that nothing horrible happened like either a temperature spike, or slump.

It would depend on the thermostat, I think most of them just retain whatever settings were in memory.

I'm actually looking at getting one of these......

http://shop.talkaboutsleep.com/?acti...arm&page=90100

I found this power outtage alarm while doing some reading on sleep apnea and thought that it would be a great thing to have with an incubator. If the power went out or you tripped a fuse while you were asleep you might be hours before you were aware of it so I think for something under $40.00 it might save me a lot of worry.

I'm pretty sure that the helix retains the temperature settings in its memory, just in case there is an interruption in the power supply.

I wouldn't worry about your eggs...so long as the box was sealed and the incubator was shut, you probably didn't lose much heat at all.

Direct quote from the Reptile Basics webpage on Helix t-stats....

"The programmed set-temperature values are stored in a type of memory that keeps its values even when power goes out, thus settings will never be lost."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by frankykeno

Direct quote from the Reptile Basics webpage on Helix t-stats....

"The programmed set-temperature values are stored in a type of memory that keeps its values even when power goes out, thus settings will never be lost."

---

Which is why Helix is the BOMB!!!!

I adore this Helix; if I were a themostat, I'd marry it! :)
This leads me to say though, that I am glad the BP egg season is in the spring/summer. We have very frequent outages in the winter in this rural area; gladly though, we are installing a gas wall heater that is good with or without electricity, so at least the snakes will be warm if it does go out. A fair-weather outage is rare; there was an electrical storm. Bu the room it's in is never going below 81 degrees this time of year; I am sure that for a few seconds of being out, there's no harm done.
You'd think we have a generator? We do.. it is in Mark's big U-haul that he takes to jobsites.. a lot of good it does me there! ;)

Jen, just a note on generators. Most generators do not supply clean enough power to run a Helix. After Katrina, we were without power for 31 days. I tried to run my Helix's with our generator, and they woulld dispplay an error as soon as the power hit them. My Johnson however, worked fine on the generator. On/Off t-stats seem to do better than proportionals on generator power. Just my two cents.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

Which is why Helix is the BOMB!!!!

---

No doubt Helix is great, but the type of memory it uses ( EEPROM ) is pretty common nowadays, and is used in a lot of different devices. They also use it in most other quality thermostats such as Herpstats, Johnsons and Ranco.

I remember when it came out a number of years ago and thought it was the best thing since sliced cheese. :nerd:

Hm.. I am glad that the power outages in winter are generally short; we have never had one last for more than a few hours. I know that we have the capacity to at least heat the room for those few hours so the snakes would stay warm, but an incubator; I would not feel safe incubating through the winter! yay for snakes that lay their eggs in springtime :)

Quote:

---

After Katrina, we were without power for 31 days. I tried to run my Helix's with our generator, and they woulld dispplay an error as soon as the power hit them. My Johnson however, worked fine on the generator. On/Off t-stats seem to do better than proportionals on generator power.

---

I guess it would make sense that it would do this since generator power can be pretty variable and surge and drop a lot. I wonder what would happen if you plugged the proportional thermostat in a surge protector or maybe some kind of UPS first and then into the generator?

Mark

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by muddoc

Jen, just a note on generators. Most generators do not supply clean enough power to run a Helix. After Katrina, we were without power for 31 days. I tried to run my Helix's with our generator, and they woulld dispplay an error as soon as the power hit them. My Johnson however, worked fine on the generator. On/Off t-stats seem to do better than proportionals on generator power. Just my two cents.

---

That is good to know, we are looking to get a generator before next winter. Glad I have both types of T-stats.... only we have herp stats, not helix, but I'd imagine the herp stat would probably display the same error message as a helix.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarkS

I guess it would make sense that it would do this since generator power can be pretty variable and surge and drop a lot. I wonder what would happen if you plugged the proportional thermostat in a surge protector or maybe some kind of UPS first and then into the generator?

Mark

---

This was exactly my first thought on reading that post. If you were to use a UPS in line between your generator and your thermostat it should clean the incoming power and provide you with steady, reliable output. You can pick up a small UPS that would be more than sufficient for this purpose for less than $20 on ebay..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CntrlF8

This was exactly my first thought on reading that post. If you were to use a UPS in line between your generator and your thermostat it should clean the incoming power and provide you with steady, reliable output. You can pick up a small UPS that would be more than sufficient for this purpose for less than $20 on ebay..

---

I disagree entirely. Seriously... a $20 UPS is going to be rated at MAYBE 200 watts (probably less). Furthermore, putting another device between the Thermo and Generator gives you a single point of failure. 200 watts isn't even enough to handle 10 feet of 11" flexwatt.

If you are using 11" flexwatt, count the total amount of flexwatt in feet, and multiply that by 20. You'll have the approximate output rating (in wattage) for the Surge Protector.