Quote Originally Posted by Maixx View Post
I'm set up the same way. I just use an incandescent bulb.
And its on a timer so I get a slight night drop.

The argument I hear about hot rocks is "if it fails and overheats it can kill your snake"
Well this goes for most heating items. I have a friend in our Herp society that lost a sand boa from a failing UTH, it shorted out, overheated, so bad that it didn't just cook her snake, the bottom of her viv shattered.
Thermostats can fail, dimmers can fail, UTH can fail, lights can shatter.
You just need to watch your setup, check all your equipment overtime you do a full cleaning, and understand bad things happen there will be horror stories. Using quality equipment helps but really, everything will wear out, or possibly fail.
I don't have a regulator or anything on my UTH. It's not attached to the tank (they're both sitting on the floor right now since I haven't gotten the rest of my set up moved over), but the UTH can get up to 118. I've used it for the near two years I've owned the snake without any issues. No burns or anything. On the other hand, it's a 5 gal size UTH on on end of a 30 gal long (even when she was in the 10 gal I didn't have problems). I do need to get the one end of the tank propped up slightly for air flow, though.