Quote Originally Posted by steveboos View Post
In your situation, i would just buy an UltraTherm heat pad instead of flexwatt. Flexwatt is PERFECT for rack situations, but if left on a cheap thermostat or plugged into the wall, it can get up to 140 degrees, if not hotter and burn your snake. I would just get some Ultratherm heat pads and they almost never get above 110 when plugged in to the wall, so a dimmer switch is fine and is more than fine for a small setup. When you build a rack though, get either back heat with one huge strip of flexwatt or heat on each shelf and a really good thermostat, either Ranco, Johnson, Herpstat, or Helix.
I used flexwatt for years with nothing more than a homemade dimmer switch controller. It worked fine. I'm probably going to get roasted on this one, but the person with a small collection does not need to buy the expensive thermostat controller. I had my racks set up with one extra tub, set up just like the rest. I ran a a cheap thermometer into this tub to get an ambient temp. I set the flexwatt temps with the use of a homemade dimmer and everything was fine for years.

Sorry if I fly in the face of conventional wisedom, but you don't need the fancy, high dollar gadgets.

Jim Smith