Bulk lighting dimmer

[Mike Fisher]

Just a photo of how I set up my basking light dimmers. One power strip with cord cut and dimmer spliced in. Will control up to six lights without additional splitters, just don't exceed the dimmer rating.

I'm not posting a instructional DIY for liability reasons, so you are on your own there. If you don't know what you are doing with electricity and wiring, find someone who does.

 

[Montium]

Nice, it would be fun to incorporate it with a digital dimmer and some comp control. I have been trying to decide if I want to adopt some of the fish lighting control for the chams. My reef light even has an app I can control it with the phone lol.

 

[Mike Fisher]

Yeah you could really go crazy with the automated aspect, just wanted to show the caveman approach. Total cost under $10. I notice a lot of people have to switch out bulbs for summer/winter. With this you just run the same bulbs year round and just dim them down for summer. If you run the bulbs just a few percent under their maximum setting it can increase bulb life by a good margin. I've got some bulbs from the 1990's still in operation.

 

[Montium]

That's awesome on the lifespan. I may need to do this with the young tortoises.

 

[MelissaB]

That's a great idea, Mike. I just might have to make one of those. It's a whole lot simpler than having multiple dimming switches, not to mention cheaper. Thank you for posting that, and if you have any more tricks up your sleeve, I'd love to see them.

 

[Mike Fisher]

That's a great idea, Mike. I just might have to make one of those. It's a whole lot simpler than having multiple dimming switches, not to mention cheaper. Thank you for posting that, and if you have any more tricks up your sleeve, I'd love to see them.

Thanks for the kind comment. Here's another one in case you need more cable. Instead of putting the dimmer on the power strip cord, you could put it on an extension cord, then plug that in to your power strip. Make sure you use a heavy duty extension cable, not the cheap lamp cord kind.

And if you use a extension cable with a power tap end with multiple outlets, you can run multiple power strips off of it as long as you don't go over the wattage rating of the dimmer, which is usually 600 watts.

I made this one up today to control my cricket heat tape.