Quote Originally Posted by Sauzo View Post
A rheostat is better than an unregulated UTH. I have used rheostats from Home Depot for a long time on everything from UTH to heat lamps and ceramic heat emitters. They are better than nothing and if your UTH does short out or go crazy, it is limiting the voltage to it to begin with so it wont burn your snake. The downside though is there is no safety shutoff on lamp dimmers and assuming you are keeping your snake in a room that is either warmed with something like a room heater like a reptile room or you keep your house fairly warm, you shouldn't have to adjust too much. I keep my house set to 70f and I almost never need to adjust my dimmers. I also check on my snakes and lizard a lot as they are all pretty social and really like the interaction. But yes a thermostat is still the best, even something like a Hydrofarm which is only $35.

Lol honesty im no sure why I keep responding to this gals threads as she doesn't listen to anyone anyways. Guess I must really be that bored
A rheo/dimmer is a short-term solution since it takes time to order a decent t-stat and get it shipped - or in the OP's case, she needs some time to save up or to get her next paycheck so she can buy the t-stat.
As was pointed out, if your room's ambient temperature fluctuates then the pad will fluctuate also, as the rheo/dimmer won't adjust the pad to keep it the same temp no matter what the room does. So, if the pad is 90*F with a room ambient of 75*F, then the pad will go to the mid-90's if the room goes to the mid-70's.

And yes, since some t-stats fail wide open - I found out recently that VE's do, more's the pity since a lot of people use them - then it's not a bad idea to install a dimmer between the t-stat and the heat appliance so that if the t-stat does fail the heat won't go so high that your snake ends up burned or dead.