Not a good day, but could have been worse..

[zina10]

I used to drive myself nuts with heat tape and sensors. To many failure points (at least in my head). Always checking and rechecking. I'm the kind of person who will check and make sure the oven is off in the middle of the night. If you are going to use heat tape, I would run another thermostat and probe inline so that one is a fail safe for the other. I don't deal with that craziness anymore other than in my isolation rack. I am now running ambient and it is a lot easier to figure out if something is wrong.

I wouldn't trust hot glue for anything other than decoration.

I would like to use ambient heat, but until I have one dedicated room in which I could do that, I have to rely on other methods.

How did you fasten the probe ? I researched that quite a bit and many people said to use hot glue on the tip and tape on the cable (or hot glue)

Was told not to use Alu tape. It sticks well but can mess with the readings. Electric tape doesn't stick well.

Grateful for any ideas

You bet I will check that probe every time I open a tub from now on.. Plus I will attach another probe to a digital thermometer, so the temp is always in front of me. (thanks Chris)

I always wondered how you put another thermostat on flex tape. I know some people connect two Ranco's to one another, but how else can one do that ?? If I plug in the heat tape to the thermostat, what do I plug into the second thermostat?? I mean, how will the second thermostat control the heat tape, if that is plugged into thermostat #1 ?

And that doesn't protect me from probe failure (if 2 thermostats are connected to one another), right ?

I'm just trying to understand how I can run 2 independent thermostats, each with their own probe, to one single flex heat tape, that only has one plug to put into one thermostat..