Just thought I'd post this for the newbies like me out there who are still tweaking their setups:
I've had my mojo girl for 2 months. Until now, I've been using just the Acurite combo thermometer/hygrometer to monitor her tub temps, and everything was looking fine: cool side 80-81, warm side 89-91, humidity around 60. I use a UTH on a Herpstat 1, which is set to 93.
Then I got an IR temp gun, and it shows the surface temp of the warm side at about 4 degrees lower than what the probe from the Acurite shows (which is placed between layers of paper towel substrate over the center point of the warm side).
On the cool side, there's less than 1 degree difference between the surface temp as measured by the gun and the ambient tub temp at floor level by the Acurite thermometer.
I was really surprised to see that the heat produced by the UTH is so much less on the surface of the paper towels than just one or two layers down. I've since bumped the herpstat up to 95, and now the surface temp on the warm side is 90 per IR gun, while acurite says 92. Maybe this point is so obvious that the experienced keepers are all rolling their eyes by now, but I'm really glad I got that gun to straighten me out! I'll be double-checking from now on.
(the temp gun is RBI 412L, if anyone wants to know)
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