had power outage..

[Ginevive]

My incubator is heated by flexwatt, hooked to a Helix proportional..
Yesterday, I was on lunch at a restaurant with my coworkers. Suddenly the power went out.. my stomach sank. I am on the same power grid as the restaurant.. It was out for about 20 seconds. Just enough to shut off/mess with all of my fish tank filters.. grr..
Well, I got home.. all of the digital clocks in the house were blinking. So, I walk over to the incubator.. it looks as if nothing ever happened!
Is there a battery in it that stores the temperature settings or something? I am not electronically inclined and realize that this is more of a thermostat question, but I was so relieved to know that nothing horrible happened like either a temperature spike, or slump.

[MarkS]

It would depend on the thermostat, I think most of them just retain whatever settings were in memory.

[frankykeno]

I'm actually looking at getting one of these......

http://shop.talkaboutsleep.com/?acti...arm&page=90100

I found this power outtage alarm while doing some reading on sleep apnea and thought that it would be a great thing to have with an incubator. If the power went out or you tripped a fuse while you were asleep you might be hours before you were aware of it so I think for something under $40.00 it might save me a lot of worry.

[elevatethis]

I'm pretty sure that the helix retains the temperature settings in its memory, just in case there is an interruption in the power supply.

I wouldn't worry about your eggs...so long as the box was sealed and the incubator was shut, you probably didn't lose much heat at all.

[frankykeno]

Direct quote from the Reptile Basics webpage on Helix t-stats....

"The programmed set-temperature values are stored in a type of memory that keeps its values even when power goes out, thus settings will never be lost."

[Freakie_frog]

Direct quote from the Reptile Basics webpage on Helix t-stats....

"The programmed set-temperature values are stored in a type of memory that keeps its values even when power goes out, thus settings will never be lost."

Which is why Helix is the BOMB!!!!

[Ginevive]

I adore this Helix; if I were a themostat, I'd marry it!
This leads me to say though, that I am glad the BP egg season is in the spring/summer. We have very frequent outages in the winter in this rural area; gladly though, we are installing a gas wall heater that is good with or without electricity, so at least the snakes will be warm if it does go out. A fair-weather outage is rare; there was an electrical storm. Bu the room it's in is never going below 81 degrees this time of year; I am sure that for a few seconds of being out, there's no harm done.
You'd think we have a generator? We do.. it is in Mark's big U-haul that he takes to jobsites.. a lot of good it does me there!

[muddoc]

Jen, just a note on generators. Most generators do not supply clean enough power to run a Helix. After Katrina, we were without power for 31 days. I tried to run my Helix's with our generator, and they woulld dispplay an error as soon as the power hit them. My Johnson however, worked fine on the generator. On/Off t-stats seem to do better than proportionals on generator power. Just my two cents.

[xdeus]

Which is why Helix is the BOMB!!!!

No doubt Helix is great, but the type of memory it uses ( EEPROM ) is pretty common nowadays, and is used in a lot of different devices. They also use it in most other quality thermostats such as Herpstats, Johnsons and Ranco.

I remember when it came out a number of years ago and thought it was the best thing since sliced cheese.

[Ginevive]

Hm.. I am glad that the power outages in winter are generally short; we have never had one last for more than a few hours. I know that we have the capacity to at least heat the room for those few hours so the snakes would stay warm, but an incubator; I would not feel safe incubating through the winter! yay for snakes that lay their eggs in springtime