I got some interesting/contradicting advice today

[Raven01]

Edit seems to be not working for me atm.
The rest of that advice offered by that user(other than declaring all temp's will be XX) is spot on.
Buy and use the thermostat, it can be cheaper than a single vet visit and involve no suffering on your animals part.

[Surrealle]

I didn't watch the videos all the way through, but from what I gathered, the snakes in those youtube videos either came into direct (or nearly direct) contact with the heating pad, or the cause wasn't specified. I am wondering if the pet store employees meant that the plastic of the cage you were talking about would be enough of a buffer to keep the snake from getting burned even if it rested on the bare plastic? (Or were they counting on substrate to protect the snake?)

[Pythonfriend]

I know from testing my UTH heaters (without a snake in the tub) that they get VERY hot. Mine hit 113 degrees before I unplugged it. They are plugged into dimmers that can be set at a certain temperature. I would rather not risk my snakes being cooked alive, as I have seen for myself how hot they can get.

actually you cannot set a heat source to a specific temperature with a dimmer, its not possible.

if, and only if, thermal conductivity around the heat source stays constant, you can use a dimmer to set a temperature difference between the current ambient room temperature, and the hot spot. like for example, room temperature + 10 degrees.

with a dimmer, if your room cools down by 10 degrees, your hot spot follows. if your room gets 10 degrees warmer, your hot spot follows. so with dimmers it only works properly if the room temperature stays constant. even in that case thermostats have an advantage: you get redundancy if the heating of the room fails and the room gets cold. thermostats will compensate and ramp up the UTH to keep the hotspot comfy, dimmers wont.

but at least dimmers can do the job of preventing a burn, unless your room gets a heat spike so bad that your whole room goes to desert-like temperatures.

@OP: i skipped a bit through 3 of the vids, i see bad burns, but i really dont want to watch all 5 vids from start to finish. i guess i wont be the only one, so, could you sum up what contradictions you see between the videos? i guess its different treatment of burns and contradictory statements on how to treat them, right?

in closing: never use a heat source without at least a dimmer, while a thermostat is definitively optimal. and test-run your enclosure before putting the snake in. and when you want to use a heat stone with built-in t-stat, pay the extra money to get one that fails gracefully. cheap ones often fail in a 100% on position and burn reptiles, there are newer designs that have a safety preventing this failure. when these fail, they turn off and get cold.


EDIT: although i do not recall clicking this thread before, it took me to post +7 and i failed to notice, and 10 minutes of editing wont be enough to fix it, damn. apologies if my post now makes less sense than it could.

edit2: BTW you have 10 minutes for editing, after 10 minutes it is locked down and you cannot edit.

[Pythonfriend]

now i read up, i feared my post would be totally nonsensical because i at first missed the first 6 post, but its not too bad.


about the mystery of how they do it with unregulated heat sources:

it can be possible, but i can only think of exactly one option: You need to buy a heater with extremely low output. like 5 watts, 8 watts, or 10 watts. if the maximum output is very very low, it basically works like a more powerful UTH on a dimmer. but you need to test-run, you need to use the ones with extremely low output, and when it gets too hot there is no dial you can turn to fix it, you need to replace the UTH with one that has a lower maximum output levels. i think thats the secret, instead of dimming they use heaters with an extremely low maximum energy output.

[wienkeg]

fwiw... back in the good old days I used UTH's and hotrocks without thermostats, and didn't burn any of my snakes...

I now use herpstat's because I wouldn't want to burn a snake. I just didn't know any better back then. I think as long as the hotrock/UTH doesn't malfunction, you're probably good...but I'm not gonna risk any of my babies on some $10 chinese made heat source...lol

[kat_black181]

actually you cannot set a heat source to a specific temperature with a dimmer, its not possible.

if, and only if, thermal conductivity around the heat source stays constant, you can use a dimmer to set a temperature difference between the current ambient room temperature, and the hot spot. like for example, room temperature + 10 degrees.

with a dimmer, if your room cools down by 10 degrees, your hot spot follows. if your room gets 10 degrees warmer, your hot spot follows. so with dimmers it only works properly if the room temperature stays constant. even in that case thermostats have an advantage: you get redundancy if the heating of the room fails and the room gets cold. thermostats will compensate and ramp up the UTH to keep the hotspot comfy, dimmers wont.

but at least dimmers can do the job of preventing a burn, unless your room gets a heat spike so bad that your whole room goes to desert-like temperatures.

@OP: i skipped a bit through 3 of the vids, i see bad burns, but i really dont want to watch all 5 vids from start to finish. i guess i wont be the only one, so, could you sum up what contradictions you see between the videos? i guess its different treatment of burns and contradictory statements on how to treat them, right?

in closing: never use a heat source without at least a dimmer, while a thermostat is definitively optimal. and test-run your enclosure before putting the snake in. and when you want to use a heat stone with built-in t-stat, pay the extra money to get one that fails gracefully. cheap ones often fail in a 100% on position and burn reptiles, there are newer designs that have a safety preventing this failure. when these fail, they turn off and get cold.


EDIT: although i do not recall clicking this thread before, it took me to post +7 and i failed to notice, and 10 minutes of editing wont be enough to fix it, damn. apologies if my post now makes less sense than it could.

edit2: BTW you have 10 minutes for editing, after 10 minutes it is locked down and you cannot edit.

I think I worded it wrong.

However, the temperatures are stable, sometimes vary by a degree or two.

[jclaiborne]

I didn't watch the videos all the way through, but from what I gathered, the snakes in those youtube videos either came into direct (or nearly direct) contact with the heating pad, or the cause wasn't specified. I am wondering if the pet store employees meant that the plastic of the cage you were talking about would be enough of a buffer to keep the snake from getting burned even if it rested on the bare plastic? (Or were they counting on substrate to protect the snake?)

They were saying with the thickness of the Vision cage it would keep it from getting too hot. I tested this tonight and the vision without substrate got up to 113 before I unplugged it.

[jclaiborne]

now i read up, i feared my post would be totally nonsensical because i at first missed the first 6 post, but its not too bad.


about the mystery of how they do it with unregulated heat sources:

it can be possible, but i can only think of exactly one option: You need to buy a heater with extremely low output. like 5 watts, 8 watts, or 10 watts. if the maximum output is very very low, it basically works like a more powerful UTH on a dimmer. but you need to test-run, you need to use the ones with extremely low output, and when it gets too hot there is no dial you can turn to fix it, you need to replace the UTH with one that has a lower maximum output levels. i think thats the secret, instead of dimming they use heaters with an extremely low maximum energy output.

The heat pad they said they use is 24 watts.