I’ve been emailing Bob to dial in what I needed panel-wise for my Reptile Basics cages, as I’m planning to replace the current UTH with his panels (won’t need to run both). I just called today to order my panels and we were discussing his panels which have recently had some upgrades and also now come with a 15 year warranty. We also discussed thermostats as I mentioned I was looking to change out my Johnson Control on/off thermostats to Herpstat proportional thermostats.

It turns out that the swing in temperature I’m seeing is due to my set point differencial (currently at 3) which allows a swing of three degrees over and under the set point (target temp). This was not my understanding when I set these up as I thought the set point was where the temperature cut in - period. If I switch the differential to 1, I should start seeing more consistent temps without the swing. I thought this was worth sharing as other on/off thermostats may have similar settings. I’ll be making this change one cage at a time and closely monitoring the temps. I have no doubt this will resolve my issue...not to mention save me about $1,000 from not having to change out good quality UL listed thermostats and dial in new ones from scratch.