In about 1992 I made the decision to switch all my cages from just rheostats to proportional thermostats in conjunction with those rheostats. Now the brand of proportional thermostat is peripheral to the points I am interested in making here in making a case for the straight thermostat. I had heard about how much electricity proportional thermostats were going to save me over just rheostats. I was very interested in this since I had a large collection and was always interested in reducing costs. My electric bill at that time was about $250/Month. Well I made this switch over one weekend. Now it is not arguable that the proportional thermostats kept my temperatures more consistent. They absolutely did that. I loved that fact but remained puzzled for years about why on Earth my electric bill stayed the same. I still cannot explain why my electric bill never went down.

Now in 2003 I am using the thermostat that I sell. My electric bill has finally gone down. My electric bill was nearing the $400/Month mark when after making the switch my bill has actually dropped below $300/Month for the first time in about eight years. Our thermostat is an industrial grade thermostat with a heavy gauge probe cord and heavy gauge electric cords for the most efficient operation possible. Considering the fact that a large number of cages can be run off of one thermostat it is actually one of the most economical thermostats on the market. More on that in the next paragraph.

I set my thermostat to the one-degree sensitivity mark and this keeps the temperatures very steady. Instead of my thermostat pulsing hundreds of times per second turning on and off to maintain that perfect temperature my thermostats turn on and off every ten minutes or so. On for a few minutes and then off for about ten. This means I am actually only running my heat about 25% of the time. No wonder my electric bill has gone down. The temperatures are very steady and predictable. I am using only the "double thermostat" set-ups for optimal safety sake and sleep like a baby now at night. I have banks of cages plugged into the thermostat and run about 24 cages on each thermostat. 24 cages you say? Yes, 24 cages. The thermostat will handle 1500 watts, which is far more than the heat is for 24 cages. You can't just use the wattage limitations to determine how many heat sources you can connect to one thermostat. Too many extension cords, besides being an unnecessary risk, can reduce the amount of voltage making it to your heaters. This may mean you will not be able to reach the temperatures you need. Just keep that in mind when setting up your system. I only use about 10 watts of Flexwatt in each of my 4' cages to heat them. I keep my room at 75-76 degrees day and night. At night I manually turn off the power to the thermostats. This allows my temps in cages to drop to about 78 or 79 overnight, which is perfect for my stuff. I really like the idea of turning them off manually as well. This forces me to look at the temps and do any tweaking if necessary if a female is gravid or for any other reason that I might need to adjust something.

All in all I am very happy to have made the switch. The "Double Thermostat" that is a "Boaphile Plastics" exclusive is the simply the wisest system available that can be used today. Having had one thermostat failure that killed 14 Peruvian Red Tail Boas in about 1995 I had no desire to have a repeat of that disaster. The Double Thermostat gives me the peace of mind I need to rest easy knowing my animals are as safe as possible.

Jeff Ronne / The Boaphile