I'm going to heat my cages with a 1/2" heat rope designed for keeping pipes and rooftops from freezing. Mainly because I am in the trade and got a steal on the product, pretty much at the distributors cost.



My plan is to secure the rope underneath each cage section, which in turn would also be the ceiling of the cage above it. This in my mind would create belly heat for the cage above, and air or radiant heat for the cage below.



I am going to loop the tape back and forth across the leftmost 1/4 of each cage (48" cages) and secure it to the melamine with some insulated nylon wire holders designed for standard 1/2" romex cable. I will run the heat system off of a BAH-1000 Big Apple Herp thermostat.



Does this sound acceptable as far as heating the cages goes? Each cage would have belly heat below it, and the ceiling above it (the floor for the next cage) would have radiant heat as well. As long as the melamine will transfer the heat it should work like a charm.



The product states that it doesn't excede 100 degrees F surface temp even run wide open due to a proprietary design, and can be used with plastic pipe (PVC pipe) without any type of external temp control, so I am comfortable that it wouldn't be a problem with the melamine being that I will be running a thermostat to control it.



Sorry so long, comments / suggestions always welcome.



Dan.
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"Colubrid-aphilia", adj; An inordinate love of Colubrids.

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