Leos and summer heat

I didn't even think about this being a possible issue until I read that you should unplug your UTH if room temperature rises above 80 F (if you don't have a thermostat). But this made me think, how do you guys handle the summer months? I assume most people use air conditioning to keep temps. in the 70s but we don't have air conditioning, except for a crappy thing in the kitchen that we only use on the worst of hot days. It isn't extremely hot here except for maybe a week or two in late July, but during that time, will a gecko be able to adapt or would they just overheat and die? Would a fan help at all? If temps. got into the high 80s the temperature gradient would pretty much go out the window, and that sounds like kind of a major problem to me.

Can someone shed some light on this for me?

I think most of us with use a thermostat.. it controls everything for you. You set the heat mat up to the thermostat.. and then set the maximum temperatures you want in the tank. If the heat mat goes over this temperature, the thermostat will automatically turn it off. In the summer months in the UK its not very hot.. but in the US, i guess you could just turn the thermostat down to a lower temperature.. and your thermometer will tell you the temperature of the tank soo you would just make sure it doesnt get high.

well here in the UK i dont think our outside temps make it that high but all my set-ups are run with thermostats so they dont over heat.

Well, I guess I mean even if the thermostat turned off the heater, if room temperature is 90 one day, the tank will be too, and there would be no way for the gecko to escape to a cooler area. If that makes an sense.

hmmm.. I don't know. maybe you could put a big swallow water dish in and your gecko could sit in it or put some ice in a little plastic bag and your gecko might use it as a cushion and lay on it or spray the moist hide with cold water... :/

First thing to do would be to reduce the hot side so the large proportion of it is the room temp side.

I would suggest a fan or something to keep a cold spot for it to cool down. But ultimately 80* shouldnt be anything to worry about, a leo doesn't really need to cool down below 85 in a biological sense, but they are given a cold side of 70* so they can cool down a lot quicker, safer and easier.

IF it DOES reach 90 on the cool side, then a fan will be needed to create a cold spot.

I doubt that it would get quite that high, but I guess I just want to make sure I've got all my bases covered in case we get a heat wave. Like I said, there would only be a few weeks out of the year that actually concern me, so I assume I'll be able to manage with fans and a large shallow dish should the occasion arise. Thanks for the advice.

The easiest way to cool off a side of the tank would be with a frozen water bottle. I put them in with my rabbits if it gets excessively hot and they will keep half a 36 inch long cage cool for up to six hours

Also a really good idea. Thanks.