Hi,
I've got a number of questions for those who use heat cables please.
Question 1: How close together are you comfortable with the heat cable being to each length?
Question 2: When you first determine which wattage cable you will need do you calculate heat based on the wattage of the cable, or on the area and spacing of the cable?
Question 3: What cable would you recommend to heat a 40x40cm tile?
... or would I be better off just going a heat mat to make things simpler even though they say that heat mats should only be used on glass viv's?
Expanding on the questions above:
The heat cable I have is Reptile one. In the instructions it says to have the cable no less than 5cm apart.
However with my tests - I can not achieve the temperature required with the cable at this spacing so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or whether their instructions are not practical?
Do you follow the manufacturers recommendation and are you able to get sufficient heating - or is the recommendation more of a liability issue and impractical in real world scenarios?
It seems from some photo's I've seen people put the cables much closer together but of course photo's can be deceptive with measurements so I wanted to check if I should bring them closer together or if I'm doing something wrong not to generate the required heat at 5cm spacing?
In my situation it gets cold down here. (Inland victoria) - so maybe these recommendations are sufficient for warmer environments such as northern NSW and QLD?
Next, I've found something interesting with the cable's wattage vs length.
Reptile one have the following cables.
15w - 2.0m
25w - 4.5m
60w - 7.5m
100w - 12.0m
Knowing that the heat is a direct product of the energy used - it seems that the 25w cable is actually the coolest of the lot when it comes from heat emitted over a particular length of cable.
ie:
15w = 7.5watts / meter
25w = 5.5watts / meter
60w = 8.0watts / meter
100w = 8.3watts / meter
(I'm trying to get the 25w one up to the high 30's with heat at present).
While the 25w will give off more heat over the total length compared to the 15w - it seems as though the 25w one gives off less heat per any given area compared to the 15w if everything else is the same. (Spacing, etc).
I'm sure it's not supposed to be this complicated to figure out which has me thinking I'm missing something trying to get my heat levels right.
Thanks in advance.
I've got a number of questions for those who use heat cables please.
Question 1: How close together are you comfortable with the heat cable being to each length?
Question 2: When you first determine which wattage cable you will need do you calculate heat based on the wattage of the cable, or on the area and spacing of the cable?
Question 3: What cable would you recommend to heat a 40x40cm tile?
... or would I be better off just going a heat mat to make things simpler even though they say that heat mats should only be used on glass viv's?
Expanding on the questions above:
The heat cable I have is Reptile one. In the instructions it says to have the cable no less than 5cm apart.
However with my tests - I can not achieve the temperature required with the cable at this spacing so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or whether their instructions are not practical?
Do you follow the manufacturers recommendation and are you able to get sufficient heating - or is the recommendation more of a liability issue and impractical in real world scenarios?
It seems from some photo's I've seen people put the cables much closer together but of course photo's can be deceptive with measurements so I wanted to check if I should bring them closer together or if I'm doing something wrong not to generate the required heat at 5cm spacing?
In my situation it gets cold down here. (Inland victoria) - so maybe these recommendations are sufficient for warmer environments such as northern NSW and QLD?
Next, I've found something interesting with the cable's wattage vs length.
Reptile one have the following cables.
15w - 2.0m
25w - 4.5m
60w - 7.5m
100w - 12.0m
Knowing that the heat is a direct product of the energy used - it seems that the 25w cable is actually the coolest of the lot when it comes from heat emitted over a particular length of cable.
ie:
15w = 7.5watts / meter
25w = 5.5watts / meter
60w = 8.0watts / meter
100w = 8.3watts / meter
(I'm trying to get the 25w one up to the high 30's with heat at present).
While the 25w will give off more heat over the total length compared to the 15w - it seems as though the 25w one gives off less heat per any given area compared to the 15w if everything else is the same. (Spacing, etc).
I'm sure it's not supposed to be this complicated to figure out which has me thinking I'm missing something trying to get my heat levels right.
Thanks in advance.