# Heat mat + thermostat = not enough heat?



## cordeliarose (Oct 23, 2017)

I have a crested gecko. I got her over the summer, where the general temperature plus a heat mat was enough to keep her vivarium at around 24-25C during the day, and about 20C-21C at night. However, now that winter’s coming in, it’s harder to keep the temps up. From the start I had a thermostat and heat mat, which all worked fine, but recently the viv has been dropping to about 21C-22C during the day. I thought perhaps the heat mat wasn’t powerful enough at only 7 watts, so I bought a new one (20 watts) and used it with the same thermostat, which is a pulse thermostat with a capacity of 600 watts and ranges from 20C-45C control. However, despite the new heat mat, the temperature has not gone up at all.


The viv is taller than it is wide, and the heat mat completely covers one side of it on the outside. It won’t quite fit inside, but I didn’t think that would be an issue as such a powerful heat mat would be able to get hot enough anyway. I’ve placed the thermostat probe right next to the mat on the outside, just next to it on the inside, in the middle of the viv, and on the complete other side. None of this has affected the temperature drastically; at most it’s altered it by about 0.5C.

Basically, what I’m asking is how do I get the thermostat to do its job and raise the temperature to what I’m asking it to be?


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## FK Geckos (Jun 29, 2017)

Heat mats are almost useless for heating the air. They are contact heaters and really shouldn't as much use in the hobby as they do. You will be much better using a halogen light bulb for during the day and if you really need heat at night a low wattage ceramic heater. The bulbs will allow for basking areas to be provided and will warm the air much more effectively.


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## Tortoise Man (Nov 29, 2010)

cordeliarose said:


> I have a crested gecko. I got her over the summer, where the general temperature plus a heat mat was enough to keep her vivarium at around 24-25C during the day, and about 20C-21C at night. However, now that winter’s coming in, it’s harder to keep the temps up. From the start I had a thermostat and heat mat, which all worked fine, but recently the viv has been dropping to about 21C-22C during the day. I thought perhaps the heat mat wasn’t powerful enough at only 7 watts, so I bought a new one (20 watts) and used it with the same thermostat, which is a pulse thermostat with a capacity of 600 watts and ranges from 20C-45C control. However, despite the new heat mat, the temperature has not gone up at all.
> 
> 
> The viv is taller than it is wide, and the heat mat completely covers one side of it on the outside. It won’t quite fit inside, but I didn’t think that would be an issue as such a powerful heat mat would be able to get hot enough anyway. I’ve placed the thermostat probe right next to the mat on the outside, just next to it on the inside, in the middle of the viv, and on the complete other side. None of this has affected the temperature drastically; at most it’s altered it by about 0.5C.
> ...


As FK Geckos have stated heat mats will not heat up the air within the vivarium, they only heat up what it is within contact. For the purpose of heating up the air of the enclosure lights/ ceramic heat emitter are a better solution.

Also just to add the thermostat is doing its job. That job is to prevent any heating elements over producing heat. What I mean by this, the probe that you have in your vivarium from the thermostat reads the ambient air temperature at the location it then relays this information to the thermostat itself. Using this information, if the temperature is above the selected temperature on the thermostat it will turn off the heat emitter, if the temperature is below, it will turn on the heat emitter. That is your basic on/off ones, you can get dimmer thermostats which can send varying amounts of power to the heat emitter depending on the temperatures, you can also get a pulse thermostat pulses power down to the heat emitter at various levels to control temperatures.

Now it should be stressed all the thermostat does is control the heat emitter to prevent overheating. The thermostat itself doesn't not produce any heat.

If you have any questions just ask!
TM


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