First off............... All of my racks are heated with flexwatt and I have never had a prob with any of them. What causes a failure most of the time is if your probe gets knocked loose , The tstat will continue to increase the power going to the tape which will inturn can cause a meltdown, and or fire or the tstat itself could fail ( you can also buy a cheaper tstat such as a johnson's etc for back up if the main stat were to fail. Fire hazards can be caused by it not being wired right i.e. exposed wire etc. I have had helix stats that have many years of use with no trouble at all. Personally I have switched over to the Herpstats, they are just as awesome as the helix but a bit better in price and I just like the design better.You can go with a johnson or ranco which are prob the lowest in price range and are an on off tstat to run your system. The helix and herpstat are both proportional tstats which means they constantly adjust the power usage to maintain a set temp.