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I would like to mount heat tape to the back of a set of acrylic plastic cages. This material has shown a tendency to warp if a very hot heat lamp is placed directly on it, but I don't think heat tape will cause the same problem. If it does, these cages will have to be set up in an ambient temperature room, which isn't a re-arrangement I will be looking forward to.

Is there a good way to mount heat tape onto this material? Is adhesive appropriate? If so, what kind?

Go to the hardware, heating and cooling and look for foil tape. Should be silver. I am not sure if heat tape will warp plastic or not. I would get a scrap piece and try it out before i installed it in the cages.

Thanks. What do I do with the foil tape? Is it just used like ordinary tape?

Sorry for the dumb question, but I am not at all good at building things and consider Home Depot to be a frightening wilderness full of strange and scary things. LOL

Thanks. What do I do with the foil tape? Is it just used like ordinary tape?

Sorry for the dumb question, but I am not at all good at building things and consider Home Depot to be a frightening wilderness full of strange and scary things. LOL

Hi TT,

Foil tape is used to adhere flexwatt to various materials. Not any old hardware store will have it but I think you'll be able to find it without too much searching. It looks to be a smooth and shiny version of duct tape.

However, I'm afraid that the flex watt will warp the acrylic.

Is this for aboreal vipers by any chance? I'm guessing it is since you indicated you wanted to place the flexwatt on the back.

For arboreals there is still the option of using these products in an under-tank manner. If you use the wider (11" tape underneath the cage and place a very generous water bowl directly over the area with the tape, the tape will then warm the water, the humidity levels will raise, thereby heating the air (moist air heats spaces better than dry air).

The wider tape will actually cause *less* of a temperature differential that the 3" product. And it is these temperature differentials that cause acrylic to warp.

There are a couple of downfalls to this, however. First and foremost, you'll probably have to reduce ventilation more than you'd like to cause significant heating from moist air. If this indeed for arboreal vipers this may not be ideal.

Secondly, I think you'd only be reducing and/or delaying warpage and not preventing it. If you have nice acrylic cages I think it is worthwhile to use them in a room with appropriate ambient temperatures.

One option not yet mentioned is to use radiant heat panels for these cages. The appropriateness of the usage is species specific, of course, but I do believe the Chondro crowd used them with sucess in acrylic cages.

Hope this helps.

The other Chris Harper

Just use it like ordinary duct tape as it is almost just like adhesive backed aluminum foil. Tape around the edges ot the heat tape. To keep the tape from warping the acrylic, I would use a test piece to see at what temp it does warp and then use a thermostat to keep it below that temperature.