Narrowly avoided thermostat disaster

jsheffield

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Living in New Hampshire, I have to control the environment for my tortoises; today I nearly learned a lesson the hard way.

{spoiler: all my torts are fine, and the story has a happy ending}

I use thermostat controllers in all of my tortoise enclosures to manage the heat at each tortoise's ideal level. The power supply runs through what is essentially a switch that is flipped by a temperature sensor, shutting off power to the heating element when the temperature exceeds whatever temp you set.

My experience with these has been great, but this morning when grabbing one of my tort's food bowls for washing, I noticed that the air in his enclosure felt warmer than normal. I grabbed the laser-thermometer thingy and shot temps of a bunch of spots all over the enclosure and sure enough, the temps were as much as 15 degrees over what I considered a maximum temperature for that tortoise.

I put him a covered container with warm water for a soak (figuring that he would benefit both from getting out of his house while I fixed things and getting back some moisture that he may have lost) while I looked for the reason for the overheating.

The Thermostat's sensor was reading about a degree below where it would ordinarily shut off power to the heater... the problem was the sensor. The tortoise had dug into the substrate and apparently hooked the sensor around a leg (or whatever) and then dragged it around the enclosure until it dislodged... laying against the glass door.

At this time of year, my house is in the mid to upper 60s, and the glass doors on all of my tortoises' enclosures are cool to the touch... my guess is that the sensor was cooled by the glass, which kept it from shutting down the heating element.

I reburied the sensor, hopefully in a spot that will make this kind of thing impossible in the future; then did the same thing in the other three enclosures.

The moral of the story, for me, is that you should trust (technology) but verify (by hand). The tech works so well that I took it for granted... something I will try to avoid in the future.

Sorry for the long and boring story, and this may be something that all of you already knew about and so were able to avoid, but I would have been so sad if I had cooked my tortoise, so I wanted to post about it in the hopes that it might help someone else in the future.
 

Maro2Bear

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You might want to rethink/look where you have your probe located. I’m surprised that you have it buried. I have mine hanging down (and fastened) on the side of the (inside) of our Sully’s nightbox.

If Buried, it seems like you will always have the potential for your tort to get tangled in the probe’s wire.
 

vladimir

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You might want to rethink/look where you have your sensors located. I’m surprised that you have it buried. I have mine hanging down (and fastened) on the side of the (inside) of our Sully’s nightbox.

If Buried, it seems like you will always have the potential for your tort to get tangled in the probe’s wire.

I have three thermostat's in Vlad's indoor enclosure. They are either affixed to the wall, or mounted so they hang from above and sit about 12" above the ground. I haven't had any issues so far.
 

Gijoux

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I have probes hanging from the sides of the enclosure at the level of the Tortoise's back to control the temperature and I also velcro a Sensor Push remote temperature gage onto the side of the hide, high enough so as not to be rubbed off; so I can check the app on my phone before I go to bed (or anytime for that matter) exactly what the temperature and humidity are inside the enclosure. You can name each unit so you know exactly what's going on in each enclosure. I got the Gateway internet connection for Sensor Push too, so I can check temps and humidity in all enclosures and incubator even while on vacation. Some of us are just bigger worry warts I guess.
 

Yvonne G

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If Jamie doesn't mind another helpful hint along this same line on his thread - I replaced all my pig blankets with RHPs. In two of the sheds the temperature reading never reads higher than in the 60s. So I finally opened the lid (two night boxes) and the RHPs were cold. Upon further inspection I found that the plugs had been dug out of the RHPs by the tortoises. So I had to un-mount all of the RHPs and re-mount them upside down, with the plug-in at the top.
 

Gijoux

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If Jamie doesn't mind another helpful hint along this same line on his thread - I replaced all my pig blankets with RHPs. In two of the sheds the temperature reading never reads higher than in the 60s. So I finally opened the lid (two night boxes) and the RHPs were cold. Upon further inspection I found that the plugs had been dug out of the RHPs by the tortoises. So I had to un-mount all of the RHPs and re-mount them upside down, with the plug-in at the top.

So you had placed your RHP's on the floor under substrate? Probably much better to mount them above to radiate downward.
 

jsheffield

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Thanks for all of the feedback, and for not pointing out how stupid I was... I would have been so sad if Nelson had been hurt through my mistake.

I've tried to upgrade all of my enclosures to make this sort of mistake harder to have happen again... fingers crossed.

Jamie
 

Moozillion

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Living in New Hampshire, I have to control the environment for my tortoises; today I nearly learned a lesson the hard way.

{spoiler: all my torts are fine, and the story has a happy ending}

I use thermostat controllers in all of my tortoise enclosures to manage the heat at each tortoise's ideal level. The power supply runs through what is essentially a switch that is flipped by a temperature sensor, shutting off power to the heating element when the temperature exceeds whatever temp you set.

My experience with these has been great, but this morning when grabbing one of my tort's food bowls for washing, I noticed that the air in his enclosure felt warmer than normal. I grabbed the laser-thermometer thingy and shot temps of a bunch of spots all over the enclosure and sure enough, the temps were as much as 15 degrees over what I considered a maximum temperature for that tortoise.

I put him a covered container with warm water for a soak (figuring that he would benefit both from getting out of his house while I fixed things and getting back some moisture that he may have lost) while I looked for the reason for the overheating.

The Thermostat's sensor was reading about a degree below where it would ordinarily shut off power to the heater... the problem was the sensor. The tortoise had dug into the substrate and apparently hooked the sensor around a leg (or whatever) and then dragged it around the enclosure until it dislodged... laying against the glass door.

At this time of year, my house is in the mid to upper 60s, and the glass doors on all of my tortoises' enclosures are cool to the touch... my guess is that the sensor was cooled by the glass, which kept it from shutting down the heating element.

I reburied the sensor, hopefully in a spot that will make this kind of thing impossible in the future; then did the same thing in the other three enclosures.

The moral of the story, for me, is that you should trust (technology) but verify (by hand). The tech works so well that I took it for granted... something I will try to avoid in the future.

Sorry for the long and boring story, and this may be something that all of you already knew about and so were able to avoid, but I would have been so sad if I had cooked my tortoise, so I wanted to post about it in the hopes that it might help someone else in the future.
Not boring at all! Excellent story with excellent learning experience and a happy ending! It doesn't get better than that! :):<3:
 

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