Rick,
I appreciate the issue, but hopefully the cereal box won't get burned up :)
Maybe I should replace the battery in the smoke alarm that I took out for my
transistor radio...
I think the setup _is_ hard to visualize. Basically, the cereal box sits
across one end of the 10 gal. tank. The bottom of the box has been cut away
and replaced with a dark red theatrical spotlight filter (carbonate
plastic - very thin and flexible). The lamp socket and reflector sit on top
of the cereal box. The reflector extends slightly beyond the width of the
box on either side, and sits on a hole the size of the reflector. So I
think that most of the infra-red rays are passing through the plastic, which
passes a high percentage of them according to the spectrum graph. Also, it
doesn't even start to degrade until 220 F. I don't think the temperature
inside of the box is even reaching 100 F - I measured the outside of the
reflector and it was under 100 F.
This thing seems to be very efficient. I put in a 75w bulb because it is so
cold, I have to put it down to less than 10% output just to get the
temperature down to 80 F. I have a little wall of small pieces of slate
under the light - that may be helping to keep the temperature up. Anyways,
I'm going to have to go back to the 60w bulb.
That about explains everything except the dimmer. I had a good idea for the
dimmer. I bought a wall dimmer, a lamp plug and female connection, which
are made to snap onto lamp wire. I wired the plug on one side, receptacle
on the other, added a neutral (negative) connection wire, and plugged in the
lamp. It was very easy because the dimmer just interrupts the hot wire, and
I didn't have to turn off the room current to install it because it just
plugs in. Hopefully it won't short out when I'm away from home and cause a
huge fire :)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 2:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Gecko] [LG] YARU (yet another Roxy update) - heating
> it's hard to visualize your setup, but I'm concerned about a cereal box
> (cardboard?) in close proximity with a heat source. Things may heat up
> around your place! You wouldn't want to be responsible for the gecko
> that burned down Boston!
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