PVC cage heat with UTH / Radiant Heat Panel or BOTH? Cool room.

[decensored]

I have 2x 60gal Zoomed UTH's as side heat pn my PVC enclosures. But my snake room is also heated to 75-80 degree ambient so it keeps it perfect. But I used to have them in my living room and the ambient temps would drop to 60 degrees, even with the two heating pads. It's very hard to keep an enclosure that size heated properly if you don't have the room heated.

PVC is also not a very conductive material. My UTH's are set to 100+ just to hit a 89 degree hot spot.

[kitedemon]

dav4 Nice set up. I am skeptical about the mulch doing much of anything heat wise but flower pots and that (very heavy) water bowl (I have same one) are a different story there is 3-7 pounds of thermal mass there representing a fairly large amount of floor space.

Hosted on Fotki

No thermal mass.

Question, I am guessing your probe is on the floor? If you are seeing that much effect to ambients are you not concerned that the snake may lay or poop on the probe causing the panel to spike up in temp and take the ambient air temp with it? The reason they are safe is they don't be inherent nature heat the air so as long as the floor doesn't get too hot (mine does however) and the snake doesn't lay against the panel there is no way to get burned. If you are seeing 10º at 90 I would extrapolate 20º at 100 and close to 30º at the max temp of the 40w panel (mine is a little over 190ºF RB says 190º). I no longer use mine it is off just UTH and lights I have no problems at all the RHP made no difference at all. I actually after my experiences and this discussion has strengthened the belief they do not belong in enclosures less than 18 inches the reasons why they are 'safe' in short enclosures get negated by the proximity to the floor. If it heats the air they probe needs to be treated like the probe for a UTH (my hottest caps at 160 and most 100º) and kept so the snake cannot be in between the heat and probe (in it is on the floor between that and RHP in the ceiling) and if it isn't heating the air then why use one at all unless you need a gradient that goes up and down not across?

[dav4]

How hard is it to install the RHP? I know it's just a couple of screws but do they go through the cage?

Easy...two screws into the ceiling...the pvc is 1/2" thick...screws were short enough not to pass completely through.

[dav4]

dav4 Nice set up. I am skeptical about the mulch doing much of anything heat wise but flower pots and that (very heavy) water bowl (I have same one) are a different story there is 3-7 pounds of thermal mass there representing a fairly large amount of floor space.

Hosted on Fotki

No thermal mass.

Question, I am guessing your probe is on the floor? If you are seeing that much effect to ambients are you not concerned that the snake may lay or poop on the probe causing the panel to spike up in temp and take the ambient air temp with it? The reason they are safe is they don't be inherent nature heat the air so as long as the floor doesn't get too hot (mine does however) and the snake doesn't lay against the panel there is no way to get burned. If you are seeing 10º at 90 I would extrapolate 20º at 100 and close to 30º at the max temp of the 40w panel (mine is a little over 190ºF RB says 190º). I no longer use mine it is off just UTH and lights I have no problems at all the RHP made no difference at all. I actually after my experiences and this discussion has strengthened the belief they do not belong in enclosures less than 18 inches the reasons why they are 'safe' in short enclosures get negated by the proximity to the floor. If it heats the air they probe needs to be treated like the probe for a UTH (my hottest caps at 160 and most 100º) and kept so the snake cannot be in between the heat and probe (in it is on the floor between that and RHP in the ceiling) and if it isn't heating the air then why use one at all unless you need a gradient that goes up and down not across?

The probe enters into the other side of the t8 through a drilled hole in the back- it rests about 4" off the ground and 1" off the wall.

[kitedemon]

Nice I didn't notice it. I know many choose to place the probe on the floor under the substrate with the RHP ceiling mounted it has never seemed to be a good idea to me.

[dav4]

Nice I didn't notice it. I know many choose to place the probe on the floor under the substrate with the RHP ceiling mounted it has never seemed to be a good idea to me.

I agree. By the way, thanks for the great discussion we've had here. I never considered flourescents, never mind LEDs, as a heat source. I'm probably going to get another pvc enclosure in the near future and have some new heat source possibilities to consider.

One question. Do you regulate the heat production generated by the lights in any way? If you are using a thermostat for this, where did you place it? Thanks,

Dave

[3skulls]

Couple more questions.

So if the heat coming off the RHP and UHT is radiant, what kind of heat is coming off the light?

What would be better to hold heat in, glass or acrylic doors?

I just want some new cages dammit

[kitedemon]

I would say it is convection coming off a bulb or electronics same as objects that have already been heated like roads. That is where mass (weight) comes in heavy objects take longer to heat but slowly give back that heat to air. The understanding I have is if a block took 3 hours to heat to a given temp that it will take three hours to cool back down to the original starting temp. The heavier the object the longer it takes to heat and to cool. This I believe is the difference between Dave and my experiences with RHP mine was heating a light plastic bowl to 80ºF in a few min and when the panel shuts down the bowl cooled off just as fast. The flower pot hides would take quite a lot longer to heat up to 80º and longer to cool off and likely before they did the RHP kicks in again. My thoughts on it anyway.

If the doors are equal thickness acrylic I would think but typically the glass doors are thicker so than it is a toss up. Glass will tend to be at room temps, acrylic tends to hold above slightly at least in my experience.

No I don't use a T-stat on the light. I run proportional units and neither FL lights or LED can be regulated with a triac controller. A dimmer also does not work normally unless you buy special lights (both FL and LED cheap off the shelf will not dim either) I use just a simple light timer. The range is quite large with ambient air temps so there is a lot of room to move (75º at the dead coolest and 88ºF at the warmest I usually run between 78-84 normally 77-85 sometimes). Mine change through the day warmest is between 2-5PM and coolest is 3-5am This is quite a natural rhythm as it is effected by the ambient room temps the enclosure is in. Inherently the LED lighting is cooler than the FL lighting. This makes the night temps a few degrees lower (2-4º or so) The FL lights take some time to get warm so they gradually increase in temp. The room typically becomes warmer during the day so it also increases.

The regulation is easy as all the changes are slow and fairly gradual it is just a matter of setting different timing. In the summer the lights are off most of the time as the room ambient are often close to correct. If there is an AC it stabilizes the temp so it is just a matter of adjusting on off times. As fall arrives I often have them on longer in the am then off during the afternoon and on in the evening. Winter brings central heating so reasonably stable temps in my case about 65º or so and I keep the lights on 12 hours each basically. Then as spring hits again on in the am and evening. With a range of ten degrees of acceptable ambient air temps I only adjust with the outside weather trends if it is warm for a while I'll shorten the light on times if cooler on longer. Huge precision is not needed the surface temps I run UTH it is unaffected. One of the designers I know would use this term,

'appropriate technology' There are occasions for high tech solutions and occasions for low tech ones. Ambient air temps have a huge range unlike hot spots so high tech pinpoint control is not needed. I run some serious high tech gear (Platinum Thermometer with a data logger) but then I also use very simple solutions too, my light timer is just a simple analogue pin switch I found it the easiest to set quickly.

Dave I very much enjoy discussions like this. I think I have some ideas that I may use to help with the issues I face in my enclosures. The more knowledge we all have of the methods others have used to solve their problems give each of us some insight to solving our own future problems. No set up is exactly the same as another and every person has different issues and requirements that often take a different solution than what someone else uses.

Dave thank you for sharing your methods it is a eye opener.