Heat Lamps and UTH's affect on BGE Bills

[Adam Chandler]

It would heat up enough to keep it at 85? (Sorry I know my question is dumb..) I thought those UTH would only get so hot, does the thermostat force it to go higher?

The thing you want to remember is BP's don't care about the ambient temperature of this enclosure, which is why any thermometer that stick on the glass is useless.
Ball Pythons only care about the surface temperature on the floor of their enclosure. Which should be 78-83 on the cool side and 88-92 on the warm side(over the UTH). In order to properly measure the temperature of the floor of the enclosure you need a thermometer with a probe resting on the surface (which tend to not be very accurate) or the best way to measure surface temps would be a IR thermometer, like this:www.tempgun.com/

If your UTH is just plugged in the wall odds are the temperature of the surface right over it is 130+, which is why you want to have a thermostat hook up to it in order to keep the surface over the UTH at a constant 88-92 degrees, even as the ambient temperature of the room fluctuates.
A thermostat I would recommend is really any on this page:http://www.reptilebasics.com/thermostats
A thermostat will provide your BP with a increase in quality of life with stable temps and provides you with piece of mind. And since a UTH hooked up to a thermostat will uses less electricity you will be saving money on your electricity bill.