UTH stopped heating?

[nathan52789]

I've been getting a tank setup to purchase a pair of leopard geckos in the next couple of weeks. I have an UTH thats been sitting around so I put it on the tank but its not producing any heat and the temp isn't changing. Is it normal for UTH's to stop working for any reason?

 

[acpart]

I have had a number of UTH's that don't seem to work well. Since my husband is an engineer, he has a watt-meter around and when we plugged it in, it turned out that the UTH wasn't putting out nearly as much wattage as it is supposed to. My own theory about these UTH's is that since they are probably built on flexx-watt technology (the exoterra ones look to me just like a piece of flexxwatt that's been wired already), eventually something shorts out or gets crossed up and the UTH stops working. With the zoo-med, which is the only thing I use, the whole thing is encased in some kind of vinyl so there's no way to see what's going on in there. You probably, unfortunately, need a new UTH, but if you check ebay, there are some excellent prices even in the "buy it now" category. If by some chance you live in southern CA, you could go to lllreptile which I think has the best prices but not the best shipping prices.

Aliza