I'm very impressed with some of the modifications that have been made to this idea! Some of you guys are really putting the scotch taped beta version of this to shame =)
I am glad to see you back in this thread!
I wanted to thank you personally for providing such an "excellent" DIY solution to heating the rain bucket on a VP2!
While I did make some modifications to your original design to get more heat to the actual collector cone, it was you who came up with the brilliant idea of using that reptile heater cord! Simply brilliant!
The only reason I went with 5 minute Epoxy instead of tape to hold the cord in there was because I made the mistake of leaving this up through the summer, and the intense heat from the summer sun beating on that BLACK bucket melted all the glue on the tape, and the cord fell down on top of my tipping buckets! It is all the residual glue from the melted duct tape that makes my final installation look so messy. I tried my best ot get all the glue off, but what is left of it is permanently embedded in the plastic!
I now use TWO buckets for my rig. This one for the winter, and a stock bucket for summer.
I have since put a La Crosse wireless temp sensor in the bucket so I can monitor the temp in there, and I was shocked by how HOT it can get in there! Not from the heater, but from the SUN!! Even when the outside air temp is in the mid 80s, the temp inside the bucket was pushing 110 F!
I can only imagine how hot it was in there over the summer when we were getting near triple digit temps outside! This fact should really put everyone at ease who may be concerned about how hot the element can get the internal bucket temp. So far, the most I have seen in there is about 85 degrees F when the outside air temp was 34. A far cry from that 110!
Oh! I never showed what I did on the outside of the ISS... I bought one of those plastic boxes you use for a bar of soap while camping to enclose the AC connection between the reptile cord and the extension cord. I spray painted it black and it fits nicely behind the ISS right under the Solar and UV sensor shelf. Put some silicon sealer around the holes I drilled into the sides for the cords to come out. The box is hinged, so when I take this down for the summer, I just pop that open to get to the cords, remove the heated bucket and pop the stock bucket on the ISS. I've got the AC extension cord secured to the mast with Velcro straps, and I pull those straps off and remove the cord, so my wireless ISS looks wireless again!
Here is a shot of the Thermo-Cube with my nightlight plugged into the second outlet. I put a red Christmas light bulb in there so that when the heater has power, I get a BIG bright RED light to tell me it is working.
Anyway... I hadn't planned on doing any posting here anymore, but when I saw your reply in this thread, I just had to come on to thank you for this great idea! This thing has worked GREAT for me, and actually works far better than the overpriced and overrated Davis heater.
Cheers.