Quote Originally Posted by Pythonfriend View Post
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.