Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I keep boas and because of space I am making my boxes shorter. 18 inches instead of 24, to short for ceramic emmiters. I've been looking at this flex watt stuff. Do you just tape it to the roof or wall. Im using 3/4 inch plywood on a 2x4x18 box. It will be plugged in to a thermostat.

Flexwatt is usually installed one of two ways to provide belly heat or back heat. If you search this forum you should find threads supporting both methods. I've posted many times about never using back heat again. I definitely prefer belly heat. If I were building boa cages I would setup the heat the same way Jeff Ronne does, belly heat, large section under the left or right third of the cage. I purchased a cage with 2X heat and in the area I keep my racks and cages I found that stacking that cage on top of rigid insulation really helped. When placed directly on a stand, the temps got up but were borderline stable. Too much fluctuation due to room temp changes. I set the cage on top of a 2x4 2" thick sheet of rigid insulation. Much more stable temps and it used less electricity.
If your cage floor is 3/4 inch you can use a router and cut out a shallow section for 11" flexwatt. Then cover the entire floor.

It doesn't sound like this stuff puts out much heat. I need to rise the temps 10 to 15 degrees above room temp. To do that I believe the heat source would be to hot for belly heat.

Flexwatt will raise the temps 10-15 degrees, no problem. If you think that's too much for belly heat, check out the pre-fab boa cages.

The differance there is that it's under the floor. Being 3/4 inch plywood I don't think that would work. Also I don't have a router to inlay it with. Would it work if I were to tape it to the inside roof?

Would it work if I were to tape it to the inside roof?

That would be less efficent and probally wouldn't give you the basking temps required.

The best solution often is to cut out a section of the floor for the heat tape than cover the entire floor in a durable material, suc as PVC.

You could could sandwhich the heat tape between a material and the floor but this can be disaterous as the tape needs to have a gap to allow air to flow or the heat will build up until either the tape melts and fails or you ignite the cage.

I personally have my heat tape in the walls of my enclosures and on the back sandwhiched between reflectix material and not sealed to allow airflow and expansion.

Best of Luck

-----
Jeremy

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

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