How are you planning to use it with a space heater?
A lot of people do this, you stick the thermostat probe somewhere in the room to measure the ambient temperatures. The thermostat then turns the space heater on and off to keep the room at the desired temperature.
from the reptile basics site:
The Ranco/Johnson is good for about 1500 watts and the VE-100 for 700 watts. For most users this does not make a lot of difference. The one big exception to this is if you are using a thermostat to control a room heater. Generally oil filled space heaters work well in reptile rooms but use about 1200 watts of power. For this application the Ranco or Johnson is the obvious choice. For rack or cage use the VE-100 offers good looks, silent operation and more than enough power capacity to get the job done!
Oh. I have a space heater that turns itself on/off depending on room temp and of course what level you set it at. Variations between space heaters hadn't occurred to me, duh. :-)
I've even seen some people bypass a space heaters internal thermostat, and just hook up one of these because that are more accurate. I probably wouldn't bother, but then again I would probably just get a cheaper one without an internal thermostat anyway lol
My space heater was a Christmas present--otherwise I wouldn't have spent the $150 to get it, haha. It works really well though in combination with a CHE for the cold Michigan winter. :-)
Mine has a built in thermostat on it. Its just not reliable. Iv seen it go from 80 to 70. Its only happens when there is a dramatic change is weather. But I live in Indiana and you can expect the weather to go from 50 to 0 in the matter of 2 days.