Flexwatt and Powerstrip

[digizure]

Hello, I have a nine shelf rack system for my ball pythons. Each shelf is 3 ft wide and I'm thinking about cutting my roll of 4 inch flexwatt into nine 3 ft pieces and have them individually wired and plugged to a powerstrip. Then, plug the powerstrip to my herpstat.

My biggest concern is, if I place the probe in the middle shelf, how do I know if there is a failure on the other shelf? Is this something I should be concerned about?

Thanks.

[Danimal]

Why individually wired?

[digizure]

Because I am afraid that I'd get bad fluctuation with 32 ft of flexwatt (one piece).

[Hurrok]

If you continue with the way you planned out you can just get individual thermometers that have a probe connected to them. You can get them at Wal-mart for pretty cheap.

Another route you can go for is to actually figure out how much you need for 3 shelves and wave it through, giving you a more clean shelf without a whole bunch of wires everywhere. Luckily tape doesn't take up a lot of wattage so you shouldn't have to worry about exceeding what your stat can take. Most sites will actually tell you how much wattage a certain amount of tape can use up.

Kind of like this set-up:

[Danimal]

Originally Posted by digizure

Because I am afraid that I'd get bad fluctuation with 32 ft of flexwatt (one piece).

I wasn't thinking all 32 feet, I wire mine parallel. That way you can have a piece cut for each shelf, wired together, but only 1 or 2 plugs. Google parallel, there are lots of pics.

[millertime89]

There's $20 temp gauges at pet stores you that will display min and max temps. A temp gun is useful for instant temps too. Are you using the new flexwatt from RBI/PE?

[Robyn@SYR]

Running a separate piece per shelf, instead of one long piece, is also how I suggest doing a rack setup. You will typically see a more consistent heat result.

Your thermostat probe will only give a reading on one shelf, that is accurate.

You can use min/max digital thermos to monitor other areas, as suggested, but monitoring other levels really comes down to just a physical check.

Using a temp gun and going through random cages (far left, middle, far right), one per level, is a quick and easy way to ascertain activity.

Even in a baby rack that might be 20 levels high, it takes less than a minute and a half to use a temp gun and shoot hot spot temps on one cage per level and cover the entire rack. I suggest doing that every other day or so.

When I do that, I am not recording the temps on paper but rather just making a mental confirmation that everything is working as it should.

[erichillkeast]

My only suggestion would be to just wire them all in parallel instead of plugging them into a power strip.