thermostat

I am looking for a plug in thermostat that looks like a time switch its to work a tubular electric heater any ideas please

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...static+plug&sprefix=thermostatic+plug,aps,143

 

My 2p-worth is to get the highly accurate type - they cost about £50 - the cheapie ones have a hysteresis of anything up to 10C, and the cost of overheating by 10C is horrific ... and under heating by 10C is dead plants :( Payback for the more expensive ones could be as little as one season.

Not mad keen on tubular heaters, but I don't know what your setup is of course. Their response time is not brilliant - heat has to travel around by convection, and that takes time to get to the corners of the glass etc. personally I would much prefer a fan heater that will blow the warm air to all parts, and then fan moving the air means that moulds are non existent (particularly if you have a fan heater that you can run fan-only when it isn't cold)

If you have the tube heaters under metal staging, so that it gets hot as a "bottom heat" for pots, then that's a different matter

 

Type of thing I am thinking of @ £51.95:

http://www.garden4less.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=TER2



Also helpful that the probe" can be placed remote to the control box - e.g. amongst the plants.

 

That one (Thermo 2) can control both heaters and cooling fans, so if the latter's not required there's an opportunity to get the cost down by £12 by getting the Thermo 1 http://www.jungleseeds.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d113_BioGreen_Products.html

I noticed that the sensor cable length is stated as being 1.5m on the garden4less website and 1m at jungleseeds. Biogreen's website gives it as 1m http://www.biogreen.de/en/thermostats/thermo-2/index.php

I emailed Jungleseeds a few weeks ago to try and find out the accuracy of these thermostats (nothing on the Bio Green website) and was given a contact email address there, but haven't received any response so have put it back to Jungleseeds to chase them. As I don't know where Garden4less get their 2 degrees of accuracy from I don't necessarily trust it as they can't even seem to get the sensor cable length right.

What next, email Garden4less and try and find out where they got that 2 degree C accuracy from? Plus why they give that cable length as 1.5m? And will I then get told to chase the information myself as Jungleseeds did to me? I'm appalled with the level of customer service at so many companies these days.

 

Thanks Scrungee, Good Catch I've seen that no-cooling version before too, but as Garden4less (is that short for Has Less Product Lines? :( ) didn't stock it I didn't find it this time. :(

I saw that 2C and was sceptical. I have a thermostat that is of similar construction on my fan heater, and it keeps the temperature within my conservatory at within 0.5C (I have a wireless temperature sensor that logs continuously to my PC - let's hope that is accurate enough to back up my 0.5C claim!!). TBH I think that 2C actual hysteresis would be a bit pants for a 50-quid thermostat, but the manufacturer's spec may be watered down to cover their front, back and both sides!!

Re: service, lack of. Mrs K and I have found over the last few years that we have moved more and more of our business to companies that offer "old fashioned" service. Anyone with a foreign call centre is out - the cost of our time spent trying to resolve things via that route far outweighs any possible saving, and that's assuming that they don't cock up or have hidden built-in profiteering penalty charges. We are paying £200 p.a. for each bank account nowadays, because Handlesbanken give us excellent service. Since moving to them we have found no surprise / hidden cost/penalty, unlike Sharkleys before them, so we are probably saving £200 p.a. on that alone, but they have no call centre (just call your branch) and proper service.

I've just modified my Vodaphone contract (its for several handsets). The cost of the modification resulted in me owing them £50-odd, fair enough. They have twice direct-debited my account for £2,000 (on both occasions Handlesbanken intervened and blocked the transaction, bless them), so Vodaphone are now close to losing my business.

Our Insurance is now all handled through a local agent. He finds me the best deal, that suits me, and charges me a fee. Saves me time finding a good deal, most likely to then find that when I try to claim there is some squirming clause that avoids them having to pay out ...

I fully expect that we will only be dealing with companies that have good service in a year or two - sooner if everyone who wants to buy anything uses Google first and finds a thread like this about how companies selling Thermostats can't get their facts right, and are slow, or completely fail to, respond to customer questions.

 

@Kristen

Could you post a link to that thermostat you have with a 0.5 degree C level of accuracy as JungleSeeds have now confirmed that the BioGreen2 only has a
2 degree C level of accuracy?

 

I'll eat my hat if that Thermostat has a 2C hysteresis in practice.

Afraid mine is built into the heater itself

http://www.garden4less.co.uk/phoenix-electric-greenhouse-heater.asp

I may have mentioned it before, but I set up 30 or 40 temperature sensors to monitor a heating system. They were all solid-state sensors (based on 1-wire - neat system ). I stuck them all in a breadboard lash-up and heated it, and put it in the fridge, and all of them were within a gnats-fraction of a degree at all times. Hence I think the probability is that devices like that are highly accurate, even if the manufacturers don't want to promise it.

 

I bought one for £43 recently, not tried it out yet, its a bit big and cumbersome but if it works ok, I dont mind.

 

Does that mean somebody like me needs to buy one and check it out against the 3 dual electronic sensor max/min, 3 electronic max/min, 2 mercury max/min, 3 propagator soil thermometers, etc. that I've got?

 

Yup, someone like you needs to do that. I wonder exactly how like you they need to be for the test to be valid?