Quote Originally Posted by thegoalie22 View Post
Explain what the purpose of having a thermostat is. I know it is to control temps, but if room temps are stable and I check on it very often( I am cyber schooled),is it really necessary? To be totally honest, my absolute max budget is 75 bucks. Cant I just use my thermometer to monitor the temps, and if it gets too hot, turn it off. I have one of those round thermometers, the zilla one, and couldn't I just place it on the warm side to monitor temps? Are UTH's prone to power surges?

Where to the UTH's go? Like in the tank, outside of it, what?
you can do anything you want, he's your animal. BUT, since they rely soley on their environments to regulate their temperatures, what if the UTH shorts and it spikes? What if your thermometer isn't accurate? Its really just the 'set it and forget it" mentality of a thermostat that helps for safety. What if you go out for the night and for some reason the tems arent stable and your UTH goes up to 120?

Ive tested every UTH i've owned. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM exceeds 100 degrees F when measured with a calibrated digital thermometer. I've had them reach 124. Thats not safe. I've had them reach 105-111 with the reptitemp, thats the reason i ordered my johnson. I bit the bullet, spent the ~90 for the unit and shipping and then didn't have to worry about my animal if i left for the the day/weekend/week/whatever. If 90 was all it took to buy my piece of mind then SOLD.

As for UTH location, they go on one side of the tank on the outside on the bottom. You can either stick them on with the sticky, or use foil tape or another high temperature rated tape to stick them to the bottom so you can re-use them on another enclosure if necessary. If you get a thermostat, you put the thermostat probe between the UTH and the tank to get a proper reading. This way, the snake can't knock the probe around or pee on it or something and cool it down, causing the thermostat to kick on, you can get bad temp spikes if you dont place the probes properly. :/

Those round analog zilla thermometers are terrible, they're known for being over 10 degrees off in either direction. We reccomend the accurite indoor/outdoor thermometer with hydrometer and probe. They can be found at home depot/lowes/walmart/target for like 12 bucks , this is what it looks like http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...FIPQlAevk_2QAQ

whoa mile long URL lol!