So what I did, without snake in tank, was plugged RHP into that dimmer from lowes, I turned the dimmer down to roughly 80% give or take and the hot side temp was running around 94 degrees above his hide, cooler inside the warm hide, cool side of tank was around 82. So I then plugged the dimmer into the on off thermostat and right now have that set at roughly 84 degrees and will play with that. So hopefully if there is ever an issue with the thermostat then this RHP is only running around 80% instead of 100%.
Is this ok for an RHP to not run full power at all?
Also, I have UTH under the warm hide because the RHP doesnt seem to warm it enough under the hide. I also have the UTH on a separate dimmer plug and running that around 50% power.
Eventually I'm going to get a herpstat 2 and hook both the RHP and the UTH up to it. But this should do me good for now
It's fine for it not to be running at full power. If you have a proportional thermostat that's how it works. But 80% power doesn't equal safe. My 80w at full power got up to around 240°F. So if it was on a cheap thermostat and dimmer set to 80% and the thermostat failed on you, you are still looking at around 190°F. Still gonna cook your snake. Just don't want you having a false sense of security with that dimmer. I don't see a problem with using it just don't see a benefit either.