Yeah the temp in my apartment is pretty unpredictable since I have no control over the heat thermostat. Sometimes the room the snakes are in is warm, sometimes it gets chilly. I just want to get this T8 set up fully once and for all. Also with a proportional thermostat I don't think it would be wasting power to use both since it doesn't feed power to a heat source once the desired temp is reached, no? I also need to figure out the right size screw to screw in the thermometer probe to the T8 floor since both my snakes knock it off of the sticky thing within a week of setting it up, so I really don't get accurate readings of surface temp, I tend to rely on my thermostat for that (set up a few degrees hotter than what I want surface temp to be)...