heatpad scare

[Ginevive]

Last night, I noticed that Goblin had shed. I took the shed out, and it was as perfect as they come. But when I took Goblin out to handle him for a bit, he felt very cold. I felt under the cage, and his heatpad was not on! It was hooked up to a zoomed rheostat (like a lamp dimmer) along with another zoomed UTH which is on one of my other snake's tanks and that one was working fine.
I admit, that Gobby's heatpad was not zoomed, but I figured that the R-stat would work OK, and it has been fine for the past few months. But I unplugged Gob's UTH frrom the stat, and put it directly into the wall, and it works fine now. It has been on all night and all of today and the surface temp of the substrate is perfect.
I put a nice layer of coconut fiber into his cage so that he will not be in contact with the glass under which the UTH is stuck.
Don't worry, guys. In a few weeks I am just going to switch to human heatpads; I am sick of the fact that UTH's cannot be efficiently unstuck and reapplied to other cages.

[TONYDM41684]

I agree. I just switched to human heating pads and they are cheaper, bigger, and have more heat distrabution. Also when its that time to clean everything it is much easier. I think that I paid 20.00 for a 6x6 UTH at petco. It made one little heat spot in the 20 long it was in. The human pad was 15$ and is 24x12 a perfect fit for the 30x12 tank. It covers 2/3 and 1/3 of that is hot and disapates on the other 2/3. I will be switching my BP tank to the human pad also.