Temps

[Jay Bagley]

I put three AcuRite digital thermometers throughout my enclosure, and they've been reading between 91 and 93°. When I hit the exact same spots with my temp gun, it's reading 5° cooler no matter what spot in the enclosure I hit it with. Do you think my temp gun may possibly be bad?

 

[Tom]

Could be due to evaporative cooling at the reading sites. Or one or the other might just not be very accurate.

I don't know of an easy way to test them. Try pointing the temp gun at boiling water. I'm going to do an internet search to see if I can find an easy way to test the accuracy of this type of thermometer.

All the tests are for probed thermometers…

You could do the ice bath test or boiling water test with your infrared temp gun to see if it is close.

 

[Jay Bagley]

Could be due to evaporative cooling at the reading sites. Or one or the other might just not be very accurate.

I don't know of an easy way to test them. Try pointing the temp gun at boiling water. I'm going to do an internet search to see if I can find an easy way to test the accuracy of this type of thermometer.

All the tests are for probed thermometers…

You could do the ice bath test or boiling water test with your infrared temp gun to see if it is close.

Hey Tom, thank you for your reply. I just did the boiling water test. I also did a side-by-side test of the temp gun next to the AcuRite Thermometer. The thermometer is showing 88 , while the temp gun is showing 84. The pictures a little hazy, all the humidity was fogging up my camera. It's weird, I did the same test last night with the lights off just the ceramic heating elements running. I had my thermostat set just shy of 85. My thermometers were showing 84, but my temp gun was only showing 80. So the AcuRite thermometers we're very close to where I had thermostat set.

 

[Tom]

Depending on your elevation and the mineral content of your water, it should about 210-212 when boiling. If the device was too far from the surface to be measured, you might have picked up some of the hot pan or burner underneath. Either that or its off, which appears to be the case compared to the readings from your three other thermometers.

 

[Jay Bagley]

Depending on your elevation and the mineral content of your water, it should about 210-212 when boiling. If the device was too far from the surface to be measured, you might have picked up some of the hot pan or burner underneath. Either that or its off, which appears to be the case compared to the readings from your three other thermometers.

I appreciate you looking into it, and thank you for the advice.