Alot depends on the ambient conditions.



I would router about 3 grooves each shelf, each about 2 1/2 to 3 inches apart. You may find you only need two runs of heat cable, but having an extra groove won't hurt just in case.



You could run a separate heat cable in the 3rd groove so you can turn off cables as needed. With a 25ft cable, you can cover two grooves in 2 shelves (assuming 4ft shelf length) easily, and perhaps a single run on a 3rd shelf. So that is a total of 4 cables to do 2 runs on each shelf for 9 shelves. In fact, you may only need one pass in the top two shelves due to the air being warmer usually up there.



I've used heat cable for baby colubrid boxes only. Love it. Economical and won't overheat the box - not enough surface area on the cable for that.



I think there is another brand of heat cable that has 50ft lengths. You could probably do 2 runs per shelf with only two 50 ft cables.
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Mark

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