Just bought a 10$ dimmer from Home Depot!

Works great so far, I put the dimmer to the lowest setting just to start, and my warmest spot is at 84 degrees and still dropping I think.

So now all I have to do is just make sure its always around 80 degrees in that spot?

Do cushion the temperature slightly since it gets cooler in my room in the middle of the night?

You want a heat gradient: meaning, you want it to be mid 70's on the cool side and mid 80's on the warm side (around 83 or 84 degrees is perfect)

I don't understand your last question: "do cushion the temperature slightly"= what does that mean?

Yeah, you will have to adjust it as your house temps change.

No cushion

I like it cooler in my room at night so I leave my window open, so I'm sure it gets colder at night, so when I sleep it should be like 85 on his hot side to give it a 5 degree cushion

check the temps at night, try to keep the warm side in the low eightys. And keep the Viv away from the window.

Baller99k said:

Do cushion the temperature slightly since it gets cooler in my room in the middle of the night?

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If you are asking what I think, NO. Dimmers suck for temp regulation. BIG TIME. When it gets cooler in the room, the heat tape is kept MUCH cooler than expected. When it gets warmer in the room, it allows the heat tape to get MUCH warmer than expected. A couple of degrees increase in ambient temp can allow heat tape to go from 84F to over 90F in an hour or so.

I've went in to this (as have others) in various other threads. Search for more info, and best of luck. If your ambient temps are VERY stable, they can work GREAT!
KJ

KJUN said:

If your ambient temps are VERY stable, they can work GREAT!
KJ

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I agree here. I have very consistent climate control, and i barely ever adjust my rheostats. Every once and a while my girlfriend will dicker with the thermostat and throw my kids' temps off, but aside from that i just have a look at them a few times a day.

On the contrary, living with my dad in his 30's farm house, I was playing with the dimmers constantly due to it being rather drafty, and i found that they were not meant for such an application. If you cant control your room temperature within 5 degrees, a thermostat is probably the best way to go.

Really? I use an indoor/outdoor thermometer as well as one of those $10 dimmers. The in/out thermometer can record and keep the highest and lowest temperatures that occur, I've never read anything like those fluctuations. My room stays at a pretty constant temp though. I suggest getting a thermometer like mine, just in case. If you have problems, switch to a thermostat - but so far I haven't needed to (I've known more than one person who lost collections due to faulty thermostats, so I didn't want to go that route).

kind of like that, but with a probe to measure directly on the UTH.
http://www.thesource.ca/estore/product.aspx?product=6312009&language=en-CA

v_various said:

(I've known more than one person who lost collections due to faulty thermostats, so I didn't want to go that route).

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I agree with you. A cheap thermostat is just an expensive way to kill animals! However, I've known of as many deaths to be caused by rheostat failure as thermostate failure. The answer is to get a GOOD thermostat. $75 USD (or FRN if you prefer) seems to be about the minimum price of a good thermostat! For an animal that should live 10 years plus, you are talking about less than $1 per month! Cheap IMO. Yes, I've got some that have been running for at least 15 years. A good one is WORTH what you pay for it!
KJ

My heat pads are 8 watts, even without the rehostat it only gets to maybe 90 - 94, which might be uncomfortable but won't kill my boys. Maybe if you have a large collection I can see how it would be a hassle to be checking everyone's temps all the time, but with just three it's become habit for me.

I've never heard of a rheostat failing, they have less components and are fairly straight forward, I mean, it's not sensory, it's all mechanics and no brain (how do they even fail? Does it fall apart inside or something?). They aren't going to miss read temperatures or anything as that isn't part of their function. Maybe they were housing their snakes in a area that had a lot of temperature fulx, because then like you said the rheostat would be useless.

Based on my limited experience, what I've learned from other herpers, and what I know of how rheostats work, I'm fairly comfortable that my snakes aren't going to die early.