Thermostat failure?

[jglass38]

Today I had to move around the snake room a bit. I added one more heat source to the Herpstat (total is now 7 pieces of flexwatt). I went in there a short time later and even though the Herpstat still read 99 degrees (to get about 93-94 in the tub), the thermometers were reading close to 127 degrees. Luckily there don't appear to be any injuries from this but I am wondering where the failure might have been. The only change was the addition of that last piece of flexwatt (actually a premanufactured UTH, cobra mat I believe). This is the first time I have seen anything like this happen and in the future I am going to include a failsafe t-stat in every application. Any help would be appreciated.

J

[JLC]

Is it possible you exceeded the maximum allowed wattage for your t-stat? Otherwise, I dunno. But I'm SUPER glad you caught it quickly enough and avoided any injuries or worse!!

[kavmon]

hey jamie, what is the total wattage of the flex on the herpstat? i had one problem with one of my herpstats also. i sent it to dion at www.syderrobotics.com he repaired it and sent it back to me. dion was easy to work with. mine was doing crazy temps too, made me a little nervous.


vaughn

[jglass38]

Hard to say Vaughn/Judy. 11" flexwatt is about 20 watts per foot I believe. I have 6 - 1 FT pieces and that premanufactured piece that couldnt be much more than that. Had to be under 200 watts. Scary that this would happen at 200 watts. I emailed Dion so ill see what he says.

[Adam_Wysocki]

I ain't gonna say it.

-adam

[jglass38]

I ain't gonna say it.

-adam

hah..You dont have to...

[gncz73]

I would check each seation of your heat and see if they all read the same and if they don't try to level the heat temps between them and start over and see what happens that's what i had to do once and it worked for me.

[Regal Boids]

make sure the cobra heat mat is the same wattage!

[xdeus]

I'm curious, did you get a temp reading next to the probe?

[jglass38]

I'm curious, did you get a temp reading next to the probe?

Well funny you should mention this. I am a complete idiot and am totally responsible (not the tstat). Turns out when I was moving things around, the plug for the piece of flexwatt that the tstat probe was attached to got unplugged. So the others were allowed to skyrocket. I hit the unlucky lottery and with my 1 in 6 chance managed to unplug the wrong piece of flexwatt. Thanks everyone for the support. Unfortunately, the adapters I use to extend the amount of plugs I can fit doesnt hold too well.