RHP questions?

[yankeeslover]

Yesterday I purchased a new reptile basics 125 watt RHP off of craigslist. Picked it up real cheap, and was unopened. Of course being new to these I didnt do my homework like I should have. I installed this in my new 42 inch pvc enclosure lastnight. This RHP is huge but I now have to make due as my wife is ready to kill me after all the money I dished out, lol.
My question is, I do not have a dimming thermostat yet like a herpstat. I just purchased a brand new new thermostat lastweek which is Similar to the jumpstart one. Once again I didnt know better(but I'm learning). I do have a couple of those lamp dimmer plugs that I used on my UTHs in the past, can I hook up the RHP to the lamp dimmer, and then plug that into the thermostat? Or will that lamp dimmer hurt the RHP?
What I wanted to do is eliminate a UTH all together in my new enclosure but I think with the RHP being so long I will now use that to raise my ambient temperature to 80 or so and use a UTH to get the basking spot.
So question is, with the RHP is it ok just plugged into an on off thermostat as is set to 80 or so, or should I also combine it with the lamp dimmer and dial that down to like 80% and then have that plugged into the thermostat. Safety 1st. It will probably be month or so before I can get a herpstat.

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[gunkle]

If I understand your post you want to hook up a thermostat, plug a dimmer into the thermostat and then plug the RHP into that. Doubling with the dimmer and thermostat doesn't gain you anything. Just use the thermostat on the RHP. Adding the dimmer doesn't save you anything just adds another connection. An on/off thermostat restricted to 80% power is still just an on/off thermostat.

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[yankeeslover]

Thank you, exactly what I was asking. So now it's just figuring out how to make an oversized RHP work. One good thing, atleast now once I finish setup, I can get rid of the oil heater in my bedroom and no longer sleep at 80 degrees

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[gunkle]

If it's new never used you need to run it at full power for a specific amount of time not in your enclosure to burn off any residual oils and chemicals from the manufacturing process before putting in your enclosure. As long as it fits inside you should be fine. You just won't be able to create an ambient temperature gradient. So the whole enclosure will be a set ambient temperature and your hopefully thermostat controlled UTH will create the hot spot so you will be fine. Make sure to have the UTH set up correctly and I see no worries.

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[gunkle]

If you place the RHP all the way over to the hot spot side you may have a slight gradient on the cool side but that will depend on how much room is not taken up by the unit on the cool side. I have 80w RHP in a 3'x2'x18" and I think it's a bit over powered but that just means I'm not over using it and it should last a long time.

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[yankeeslover]

Yeah, their is probably about a foot or so on the cool side that's not covered by the heater, so I actually think If I set the thermostat to say 85, it will keep mid 80s, and low 80s on the cool side. And put my UTH on the other end, this might work.

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[gunkle]

Sounds like you got this. Is your snake in a different enclosures at the moment? It's always good to set it up complete with substrate and items for some time without the animal in it to learn your settings and get it dialed in. That will help you reduce the stress to the animal that the new enclosure may cause.

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[yankeeslover]

Yeah, he is in a different enclosure right now while I play around. Now I have to get humidity controlled. His temporary enclosure I have newspaper, this permanent one I added zoo med forest floor which is Cyprus mulch. Woke up this morning to condensation on the front doors and around 90% humidity. It's down to about 75-80 right now, so dropping some. Next time, I will dry it out some 1st.

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[CALM Pythons]

What your saying makes a lot of sense. I myself have to run my 125 watt panels on 80% power on my herpstats otherwise in a 4’ enclosure even though its set to 91 degrees the 125 watts is so powerful that it heats up to that temp to fast and then shuts the Tstat down to 0% and the RHP is so hot and heats the enclosure up to 96 degrees. With limiting the power current the the RHP heats up at a lower wattage and in return it isnt blazing up to the Tstat shut off temp...
the problem that I do see with your idea is that Dimmers have a Low Wattage max and they are unreliable. They are for lights and such that are usually 60 watt etc... however with your Tstat running inline that should stop the RHP from heating up that much more, again the downside is Safety with a low watt dimmer. Melting/Fire/etc...


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[bcr229]

If I understand your post you want to hook up a thermostat, plug a dimmer into the thermostat and then plug the RHP into that. Doubling with the dimmer and thermostat doesn't gain you anything.

I'm going to disagree a bit since the RHP is really oversized for the enclosure. Putting a dimmer between the thermostat and the RHP will help ensure that in case the thermostat fails wide open, the RHP will not overheat the enclosure and kill the snake. You will just need to set the dimmer at a point where the RHP can get the enclosure a bit overwarm for the snake's comfort, but not so high that your snake will end up injured or killed due to overheating.

If you have a Lowes near you, they sell the Lutron Credenza brand dimmer that is rated for 300W so it will handle the RHP.