I was recently away from home for about 10 days and was able to track the temperature and humidity in my various tortoise enclosures via Govee units inside each of them while I was gone.
My wife was home, and is perfectly willing to help out with the torts, but I like being able to monitor the conditions in the enclosures.
A couple of days into my time away, I noticed the temperature in one of the enclosures cycling slowly downwards from the range it had occupied consistently for months.
It was slow enough, and the enclosure was holding enough heat, that I didn't need to ask my wife to trouble shoot the problem; it would wait until I got back.
It has to be one of three things: the thermostat, the ceramic heating element, or the light fixture... I have extras of all three, but it ended up being the CHE.
I switched it out today the temperature cycled back up into the preset range within an hour and had started there ever since.
I don't know why or how the CHEs crap out, but I've had a couple do it over the years... I try to always have spare parts for all of the systems, to cover failure in any of my enclosures.
Jamie
My wife was home, and is perfectly willing to help out with the torts, but I like being able to monitor the conditions in the enclosures.
A couple of days into my time away, I noticed the temperature in one of the enclosures cycling slowly downwards from the range it had occupied consistently for months.
It was slow enough, and the enclosure was holding enough heat, that I didn't need to ask my wife to trouble shoot the problem; it would wait until I got back.
It has to be one of three things: the thermostat, the ceramic heating element, or the light fixture... I have extras of all three, but it ended up being the CHE.
I switched it out today the temperature cycled back up into the preset range within an hour and had started there ever since.
I don't know why or how the CHEs crap out, but I've had a couple do it over the years... I try to always have spare parts for all of the systems, to cover failure in any of my enclosures.
Jamie
