With the winter months coming in I'm finding that my heat mats are struggling to heat my tanks without an extra heater to heat the room. The only thing is that its one of those expensive to run convector heaters and I'm looking for something that'll be a bit more economical as I'm sure its gonna get alot colder.
Currently I have a heat strip running the length of a shelf of a bookcase and a smaller heat mat attached to a box that I keep all my spiderling pots in. Both heat mats are backed with polysyrene and are connected to one of those dual channel habistat thermostats. I also have an exo terra digital thermometer to give me a constant reading of the temp but with this setup the temp struggles to reach above 66 degrees in the tanks so I find me having to put the convector heater on for extended periods of the day which'll be costing me a fortune but does raise the temp to around 77 degrees. I'm dreading my next bill.
I did an internet search to find alternative solutions and read about tubular storage heaters. My thermostat can take a load of 300w in each channel and I've seen tubular heaters with an output of 120 watts that cost less than £20 so I could use one or two of them. Does anyone else use these or have any other suggestions? Are they any cheaper to run? I've recently insulated my loft and thats made a big difference. Any help would be mucho appreciated.
Cheers
Craig
Currently I have a heat strip running the length of a shelf of a bookcase and a smaller heat mat attached to a box that I keep all my spiderling pots in. Both heat mats are backed with polysyrene and are connected to one of those dual channel habistat thermostats. I also have an exo terra digital thermometer to give me a constant reading of the temp but with this setup the temp struggles to reach above 66 degrees in the tanks so I find me having to put the convector heater on for extended periods of the day which'll be costing me a fortune but does raise the temp to around 77 degrees. I'm dreading my next bill.
I did an internet search to find alternative solutions and read about tubular storage heaters. My thermostat can take a load of 300w in each channel and I've seen tubular heaters with an output of 120 watts that cost less than £20 so I could use one or two of them. Does anyone else use these or have any other suggestions? Are they any cheaper to run? I've recently insulated my loft and thats made a big difference. Any help would be mucho appreciated.
Cheers
Craig
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