Quote Originally Posted by suzuki4life View Post
A dimmer does not restrict the thermostat from doing its job. IF your flexwatt can not raise the temp of your tub to the temp you desire while having it restricted to 92 degrees, then you have not selected the appropriate flex watt for your application. Dimmer is there to keep the tape from exceeding 92 degrees. Thermostats are there to turn the tape on and off thus allowing the temps to raise to 92 degrees. If you need temps above 92 degrees, you probably shouldn't be using flexwatt.
Again this holds true if the room temp is stable. If it is not stable or becomes unstable the thermostat may need to increase the flexwatt heat for a short period of time above 92º (like if your oil heater fails and the room drops 20ºF over the weekend you were away) If you have everything tuned so that the flexwatt does not get over 92 and that gives you say 91 or 90 a 20º drop gives you 70º hot spot?

If your room temp is 100% stable there is no point for a t-stat at all. All you would need is a ultratherm or like UTH and a rheostat and nothing else.

If you room is not stable caping the max temp is not going to help in a critical condition. I simply do not see why you think that a failure can only come from t stats and flexwatt and not other systems too. Properly done a t stat does not allow the flexwatt get to an unsafe temp a failsafe Tstat prevents the max temp in EVENT of an over heating failure from burning the snakes and over heating the enclosure it also will work just fine in an under heating failure as well. Your described set up is only useful in over power failure but does nothing in event of an under power failure. GCFI protects against shorts if one occurs better than a rheostat will. Currently outside my window it is 38ºF the room I am in is 58ºF if I was heating my snake room to 80 with say an oil heater and it failed (like my last one did, tripped an internal breaker faulty manufacturing) the snake room as it is isolated from the house temp would drop to below 58º in no time. I prefer to keep my snakes health and run the small risk that in a few days (max a week) the flexwatt will be ok running at 110 or so to hold a temp of 90 in the rack. Rather than maxing out at 92 and having 72 in the rack 72º/55º sounds like a bad idea to me.

Are you suggesting that a primary thermostat will fail open the built in safety circuit that protects against triac failure will also fail AND the fail safe will also fail all at once? There is a reason why military computers and everything uses a triple redundant back up systems the odds are so long that they will all fail at once that the only way it can happen is a catastrophic failure like a tidal wave or something that makes all issues moot.