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homemade uth?

What type/dimensions are you trying to heat?
A premade heat mat would be best. I won't use Flexwatt, but there is a newer heat tape that is designed to be safer than Flexwatt, called THG tape. It's the same concept, but manufactured differently.

I don't know if you are familiar with the pet store in Colorado (Pro Exotics) that burned down, due to Flexwatt. They are the ones who put THG on the market.

It hasn't been on the market long enough to really prove that it is not a fire danger, but it was made to be safer than Flexwatt. I'd use it before Flexwatt.

I have ambient heat in my snake room, and will be ordering radiant heat panels from Pro Heat for my Carpet Python enclosures for breeding (I'll be allowing the females to MI (maternally incubate) the eggs if they appear to be good candidates to do so.
 
I use heatlamps so far but ive had two snakes die on me for no reason, they had stayed on the cold side for some reason,i think it was too hot on the warm side , so i am going to try and find something that the heat can be controlled. I may not need it because the whole house is set to 80 degrees
 
anerythristic/okeete said:
I use heatlamps so far but ive had two snakes die on me for no reason, they had stayed on the cold side for some reason,i think it was too hot on the warm side , so i am going to try and find something that the heat can be controlled. I may not need it because the whole house is set to 80 degrees
Click to expand...

If your house is 80 degrees and you have an added heat source, it likely is too hot.

With an ambient temp of 80 degrees (verified with a thermometer in the cage), I would not add any more heat sources.

Anytime you have a heat source, you need a thermostat to regulate it. Even with my ambient heat, I have a dual thermostat setup. I have an oil core radiant heater, hooked up to a thermostat, that is piggybacked to another thermostat, so if the first one fails, the second one shuts the heater off before it gets too hot.

Did you put the second corn in the same enclosure that the first one who died was in? Maybe there was something transmitted to the second one. Just a thought.
 
I had them in different tanks at the same time one was a hatchling and i accounted its strange behavior to the fact that one of my younger cousins had dropped when she tried to hold it( shes scared of snakes), the other was a yearling that i had since it was a hatchling. I had planned on breeding them ( the yearling was a female, the hatchling a male ) in the future. First the male died then a month or two later so did the yearling this was all at the begginning of the year. I just barely got a new snake last month, it was a wild caught kingsnake hatchling that i set free last weekend, i currently have a two male kingsnakes one is a yearling and the other is probably around two. The larger male has a mostly black belly( i think it is some form of california king snake although i have never seen one like this) and if you go to my website you can see some simalar to the yearling
 
I don't use heat lamps for any of my snakes, but we do for our bearded dragon. I bought a lamp dimmer switch - they're about $10 at WalMart or Lowes - and plugged the heat lamp into it so I can control the heat output on it just like I can my snakes' UTH.

You can also wire a dimmer switch made for controlling house lights directly into the wiring for the lamp. I've done that with most of my UTH's. They work really well combined with a good thermometer.
 
I agree that if your house is already 80, you probably do not need any extra heat. I intend to make my own heat pads for some display cages I'm planning by sandwiching some THG tape between some porcelain tiles and sealing with silicone around the edges. This should be waterproof (the cages will be wood, so they will be inside), and I will use a thermostat or rheostat to prevent overheating. This does take some wiring experience/know-how, and I wouldn't recommend it if you're not comfortable with electricity. It'd be a bummer to kill your snakes AND burn down the house.
 
I only have one thermostat set up with my UTH. Should I consider another? Room is between 73.4 and 76F year round (variance is seasonal), UTH is Zoo Med, and thermostat is HydroFarm. Setup has been running fine since January in a starter 10 gal with low end gradient 73.4 -73.6F and high end set at 87F on the glass, 80-84.5F atop coconut fiber substrate (not using aspen because of allergy concerns, and variance from heat gun readings at different locations over UTH on surface). I'll be upgrading to a 20 gal long or 29 gal soon; my little corn will be ready soon enough.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk
 
You need to buy a UTH, not make one, and you need to regulate the temperature with a thermostat.

If I remember correctly your snakes and other pets of yours died because of the room temperature being too cold in the winter and you didn't provide any kind of heat, now it is too hot. You also couldn't afford to feed your snakes, you relied on your grandfather to provide for your pets, and he refused to purchase the correct size mice for your snake and it died, am I correct?

I know we have been over this before, but please, sweetheart, I know you mean well but please wait until you are old enough and have a place of your own and have a job so that you can provide for your animals on your own dime without having to rely on anyone else for the basic living needs of yourself and your animals.

I am so glad to see your enthusiasm for your pets, but you have to remember that they are animals, and if you take the wild King snakes out of their natural environment they will rely on you every minute of every day for their basic living needs whereas if you let them go now they will still be able to provide for themselves.

I know it isn't what you want to hear, but I have to be honest and let you know what is right for your snakes. We want you to succeed in your pet ownership, and will help you every step of the way, but you really do need to have the funds in place to purchase the UTHs and thermostats and food, and then you have to follow the advice the folks here provide. There are thousands of snake ownership hours worth of knowledge here, please listen to them and you will succeed with your pets.
 
Phruit Dish said:
I only have one thermostat set up with my UTH. Should I consider another? Room is between 73.4 and 76F year round (variance is seasonal), UTH is Zoo Med, and thermostat is HydroFarm. Setup has been running fine since January in a starter 10 gal with low end gradient 73.4 -73.6F and high end set at 87F on the glass, 80-84.5F atop coconut fiber substrate (not using aspen because of allergy concerns, and variance from heat gun readings at different locations over UTH on surface). I'll be upgrading to a 20 gal long or 29 gal soon; my little corn will be ready soon enough.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

For one tank you only need one thermostat, your temps for this tank sound good, you may have to upgrade your UTH with a bigger tank though.
 
Whew -great! Thanks for the info. And I will definitely be upgrading my UTH with the new viv. The existing UTH wouldn't be large enough.

When does a second/backup thermostat become advisable?

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I've never heard of using two thermostats with one heater. I have two thermometers on my 20 gallon tank that houses my Calabars, but that's because my ambient room temp is low enough that I wanted a second UTH to regulate the cool side temps.

Two thermometers - one for the warm side and one for the cool side - makes sense, but the only time you'd need multiple thermostats would be if you had multiple heat sources, as far as I know. I would think that having two thermostats plugged into one heat source would just cause confusion.
 
MysticExotics said:
Anytime you have a heat source, you need a thermostat to regulate it. Even with my ambient heat, I have a dual thermostat setup. I have an oil core radiant heater, hooked up to a thermostat, that is piggybacked to another thermostat, so if the first one fails, the second one shuts the heater off before it gets too hot.
Click to expand...

This was the post I was originally reading. The backup concept had me wondering if I should consider such a failsafe for my UTH.

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In the vast majority of failures, the thermostat will simply fail, meaning the heat will turn off. I have twice (out of at least a dozen thermostat failures) had one stuck in the "on" position. In those cases I certainly wished I'd had a backup! And to be fair, I think in one case, the thermostat wasn't responsible, a strip of Flexwatt simply decided to cook (and the probe was on another strip). My inclination would be to spend the money from two entry level thermostats and get one very nice one (Herpstat is becoming my favorite), since better ones tend to last much, much longer. One thing I wish I'd documented over the last 15 years is the dates I purchased different brands and when they died on me. I do know that my Vivarium Electronics 300 X2 lasted only 3 years. That's the only high dollar thermostat I've ever been disappointed with. I've had many Johnson and Ranco's last about that long, but $79.99 lasting three years isn't as disappointing as $200.
 
Also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds as though you might be guessing at temperatures. You need to invest in a high quality (preferably infrared) thermometer so that you can check temperatures exactly. Trying to estimate based on what you think your house is at and what you expect a light to add is simply not going to cut it.

Remember- when in the wild, a reptile has the whole world to search out a spot that suits its temperature, humidity, and safety needs until it finds something suitable. When we keep them in comparatively small enclosures, we need to be sure we are providing them with their exact requirements in order for them to be healthy.

And I agree with the above post that if you are having trouble providing these needs due to your current living situation and budget, it is your responsibility as a pet owner to wait until these restraints are no longer an issue. It may be hard, but it is the only thing that is right, and you will find it much more rewarding in the long run to do things right when you can.
 
smigon said:
You need to buy a UTH, not make one, and you need to regulate the temperature with a thermostat.

If I remember correctly your snakes and other pets of yours died because of the room temperature being too cold in the winter and you didn't provide any kind of heat, now it is too hot. You also couldn't afford to feed your snakes, you relied on your grandfather to provide for your pets, and he refused to purchase the correct size mice for your snake and it died, am I correct?

I know we have been over this before, but please, sweetheart, I know you mean well but please wait until you are old enough and have a place of your own and have a job so that you can provide for your animals on your own dime without having to rely on anyone else for the basic living needs of yourself and your animals.

I am so glad to see your enthusiasm for your pets, but you have to remember that they are animals, and if you take the wild King snakes out of their natural environment they will rely on you every minute of every day for their basic living needs whereas if you let them go now they will still be able to provide for themselves.

I know it isn't what you want to hear, but I have to be honest and let you know what is right for your snakes. We want you to succeed in your pet ownership, and will help you every step of the way, but you really do need to have the funds in place to purchase the UTHs and thermostats and food, and then you have to follow the advice the folks here provide. There are thousands of snake ownership hours worth of knowledge here, please listen to them and you will succeed with your pets.
Click to expand...

ive always used the heat lamps, the only reason i asked about make a uth is because one day i had a random though of a heat blanket being converted into a uth and i didnt think it would be safe. The main reason i dont have a uth is because i dont feel comfortably purchasing thing online(not even ebay) and i dont know where else to find one. since my corns died we have sanitized the tanks and moved them into the warmest part of the house. Them dying was my fault and i am willing to admit that, i didnt quarantine the hatchling and i made the awfull mistake of handling one snake right after the other. now i wash my hands before and handling every single pet i own
 
Most every pet shop that sells any reptile supplies will sell UTH pads.
 
I'm sorry, but nothing about the issues you've described (in this thread or others) implies that the problem was an illness that spread through lack of proper quarantine/hygiene procedures.
 
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