IMO for an adult boa, a 4-inch wide strip is too narrow. The sheer mass of the snake makes that narrow strip of heater not very effective. It can certainly help in your situation to supplement the RHP (compared to nothing), but I do not think it is ideal.

An alternative is 2 strips of 4-inch to make an 8-inch wide heater. This is better.

You can use the 11-inch wide as well. My opinion on this is as follows: Run a strip across the entire width of the cage (4ft) and use a controller to keep this about 80 deg. This is your base temp so the cage floor and air in that area is never too cold. Then use the RHP (on a separate controller, even just a dimmer if you want) as your main basking heat source. You still have a good amount of cage space unheated for safety.

I had to do the same thing. The snake room gets into the low 60s, not ideal at all for boas/pythons but great for colubrids. In some cases I used a low-watt light to keep the cage air temp reasonable while I used Flexwatt to be the main basking source. With RHPs and CHEs though, I use those as the main basking source because they work so well for that purpose, and I use Flexwatt/heat pad to keep the cage floor from being too cold. Works great.
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Antaresia maculosa
Antaresia childreni

Mark G

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