Quote Originally Posted by kitedemon View Post
no you should not have too many problems doing that assuming you ca cut the flexwatt at 8" sections some versions you can some you can't.
http://www.reptilebasics.com/flexwat...att-heat-tape/

I bought this 11 inch flex watt because it specifically said it could be cut to any size and not just 1 foot panels.

Quote Originally Posted by Maddumpling View Post
wait how would the dimmer be used as a back up? can you explain
From what I have read and understand it works like this (Which should work). You buy a dimmer/rheostat from somewhere like home depot and plug all your flexwatt in and get it to your 91 degrees or whatever you need by adjusting the dimmer. You set it just a few degrees higher. You realize that the when the dimmer is given 100% power from the wall side, you need the dimmer at 80% to get to the given temperature you want and leave it there.

You now unplug the dimmer and plug it into the on/off thermostat. So its:

Wall Outlet>Thermostat>Dimmer>Heat Tape

The thermostat works by turning on when its too low and off when its too high. The point of having a dimmer is that lets say the thermostat fails and get stuck in the on position, not turning off when it needs to. This means the Dimmer is getting 100% power all the time now. But you have the dimmer set to your 80% that you found out would yield that right temperature before which means that the temps are going to cap out there, preventing it from getting too hot and hurting your snakes.

I would assume a nice thermostat like a herpstat wouldn't fail but just in case the dimmer should still regulate the power to keep it from going all out.

Again I havnt done any testing and am not going to purposely break a thermostat to try it out, but in theory it should work.