  Both superbursters and soft X-ray transients probe the thermal structure of
the crust on compact stars and are sensitive to the process of deep crustal
heating. It was recently shown that the transfer of matter from crust to core
in a strange star can heat the crust by deconfinement and ignite superbursts
provided certain constraints on the strange quark matter equation of state are
fulfilled. Corresponding constraints are derived for soft X-ray transients in a
simple parameterized model assuming their quiescent emission is powered in the
same way, and the time dependence of this heating mechanism in transient
systems is discussed.
