I have been struggling with my proheat panels overheating the enclosure. It’s really hot in there. I feel like the problem is my probe positioning. I don’t think i know what im doing. Radiant heat panel pals, where do you put your probe?
Picture of a naughty boy who wrecked his enclosure that i am now cleaning for tax.
Most people actually run the probe along the roof of the enclosure and then once it is near the radiant heat panel, drop it down 4 to 6 inches, depending on how high your cages are. And then they tune in their temps from there.
Thanks Riley!
Do you have a picture of that so my weird brain can understand what that looks like?
And here is Riley going above and beyond to help others!
Thank you David 
. I strive to do so.
I’ve got my thermo probe cord wrapped in a little aluminum wire back beyond the probe part, and that lets it be positioned a little ways under the RHP on the ceiling.
Are your panels the kind that need a Pulse Proportional thermostat? Because mine were giving me heck until I consulted the maker and he told me they had to be on that kind of themostat.
WOAH that’s clever! But i have one concern: about how often do your snakes attempt to rip that down thinking it’s a good looking stick to climb on?
Also no they don’t, of course im sure it would be better. But the big reason (aside from them being the best) i chose proheat is because they claim their panels work with ALL thermostats. Viv elect? Good. Herpstat? Cool. Cheap seed germiniation thermostat from Amazon? That’s cool too.
And @lumpy thanks for going above and beyond to give me a picture of what it would look like! I understand much better now. Here’s what my probe situation looks like right now:
Also, look at his new cleaned tank! Hes got a naturalistic like hide in the back that spans the whole enclosure. I’ve never tried to set up hides like this before so it’s a little experiment. I want more naturalistic enclosures so hopefully this works as practice.
I think it looks nice. 
Something to keep in mind while trying to dial in the Temps, I have the thermostats set well lower than the desired hot spot temp. For example the set temp for my vision 632 enclosures are at 82. That gives me a 90 hot spot. My vision 400s are set to 83, that gives me a 90 hot spot. My animal plastics t8s are set to 87. That gives me the 90 hot spot.
You’ll need to dial it in for your desired outcome.
Hmmmmmm. That looks familiar! Lol! 
Oh wow that’s actually really helpful. I had no idea you had to keep them so low in some situations. That kind of difference is nuts. I might just attempt that for the time being while i brainstorm a more permanent solution related to wire…
Lol what looks familiar?
The pee pads and your naughty boy! 
He figured out that he could dig himself under them and use them as a little blanket. Then he pooped under there and upended his water bowl. 
I wanted the doggy pads because it’s easy to see and clean… but nope. Now he gets dirt. Just dirt.
Yeah I know about tunneling under the pads and upending the water bowl. My BRB did it twice before I went back to newspaper and a water bowl that weighs a ton! Lol!
I’m hoping he won’t! LOL. Finnley’s not an adventurous enough climber so far, and I did make sure it would be a stretch for him to get up there. It certainly won’t take his weight so I doubt he’d try to wrap it but he’d slide off. (The potentially sharp ends are outside the enclosure.) I’ll snap a pic so you can see what I mean.
Edit:
Perspective makes it look shorter than it is, but there’s the probe, about four inches from the back wall and 4-6 inches from the RHP.
Finnley’s in this pic unseen, his warm hide is underneath that bottom bamboo shelf. The shelving setup on the other end of the 4x2 is a lot higher for his climbing impulses to go free on.
Okay, so it literally took me three years to figure it out, lol, but i finally found the solution!
I haven’t been able to make too much difference in my probe placement style due to the size of my animals outside of changing the probe placement to directly on the panel, as is specified to do in the ProHeat RHP manual.
My ideal system needs:
My solution is:
Heavy duty slat-wall retail product hooks! (With some modifications).
Modifications include:
•Cutting of the top part that hooks into the slat-wall so that the rest of the metal base sits flush to the wall of the PVC
•Drilling two holes into the (now level) base plate, above and below the hook respectively, to then put a bolt through that would physically hold the bracket to the wall.
•Adding a metal backplate that the bolts can secure onto on the outside/backside of the enclosure to increase the surface area that will be supporting the weight and force of the animal.
This should allow it to be pretty darn durable. I suppose only time will tell. The ones I have are welded to the base on one inch of the long-side of the hook, and then bend 90 degrees, which I think will result in an even more robust hook than the example one I found a pic of (assuming it will upload, as I haven’t been having good luck with that lately.) Although otherwise, the hooks are identical.
I’m thanking my lucky stars right about now that I have 1/2in thick PVC enclosures, because I’m honestly also so worried about their pulling force damaging the enclosure itself in the worst case scenario with this method. But i think this is as robust as it is going to get, outside of fully metal-reinforcing the back panel, which would be nuts.
I think I’ll also cut the tip with the bend off, smooth it, and then wrap the probe around it and secure the probe with zip ties.
I know this thread is pretty old now, but if you see this, let me know what you think of the idea, do you think it will work?
Yeah. Fat chance with the photo uploading. I have no idea what is up with that! Bummer.
Here is a link to the hooks in question on ULine’s website:
Turns out they aren’t rated to hold as much weight as I have seen them hold in retail spaces… I still hope it works tho.
