So last year I built a melamine rack. I wish I could give you a few pictures. When i built it, I made the sides a little taller than necessary to allow for future expansion, which i did a few weekends ago when i added the top two shelves.

My original 7 shelves all have one really long (the longest i could find at the store) heat rope for belly heat. The rope plugs into one of the slots in my thermostat. My thermostat has two slots avialable to plug things into it, one is used for the rope, so i have one slot open still.

My plan is to use an entirely different thermostat, and two of those really thin uth pads for the two new shelves(the ones that kinda look like flexwatt, cobra mats or something like that) [For the heat rope, i used a router on each shelf to create a ditch for the rope to lay in so the tubs don't damage the rope when they slide over it. This is the reason I'm using the extremely thin uth mats].

Blah blah blah, my question is this - even though im not planning on using a combination of heat mat + heat rope controlled by one thermostat, is this even possible? Does anybody use both plugs on their thermostat? what are the 'rules' for plugging two heating elements into one thermostat? For example, if i used two heat ropes on one thermostat, would they have to be the exact same length?? Same question for heating pads.

Also, sort of related - I was watching one of Ralph Davis's videos on youtube. On his freedom breeder rack, he has all the heating elements plugged into one long power strip, and then he plugs the power strip into the thermostat. I can understand why he does it, because he has like 12 levels, 12 heating elements, and i'm sure no thermostat is going to have 12 plug holes. Couldn't a person with a smaller rack do something similar with a smaller power strip? Even with only 2 heating elements on a rack, wouldn't it be better to do the Ralph thing, and plug both into a strip, and then the strip into the thermostat? If so, why would a thermostat even have multiple holes...and why would you want to if there's still only one probe?


Sorry for the long question.
Thank you in advance for any help.