The cages i use i built out of 3/4 in plywood. I used 1x2 on the bottom to acy as feet all the way around the cage. The wood is stained and lacqured o this inside only. looking at the clearence under the cages i don't detect any sagging. The heat tape i use is 20 watts per foot. When i posted the temps i got the teape was not under a cage , it was plug into the wall and lets see if the seperation made a difference. It did so i posted it so you guys can see the difference. What i'm thinking what happened is , where my tape sepereated heat kept building up and eventually got to a temp that cause a meltdown whitch cause the wood on the bottom of the cage to start to smulder therefore ending in my small cage fire. Now when this happened i had a turn knob style (rheostat) thing plugged into it along with a powersurge strip. Now lets see if the directions i got on how to use this was correct. I was told to either solder or use clipes to connect the cored to the tape, i used solder cause i have soldered many electrical items from my job at the time. Then use this foil tape and tape it flat against the bottom of the cage , plug it into the rheostat ad just the temp and i'm done. Is this right or wrong this was my first time with heattape or flex watt. Ohh i also covered my ends with electrical tape so nothing was exposed. thanks Paul

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