Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After going through lots of old posts, I'm leaning toward using heat rope (like that sold by Big Apple) instead of Flex Watt. I will be using it to provide belly heat for young colubrids being housed in plastic tubs on an open shelf until they are a little bigger and I build more permanent display housing for them. I live in Alaska, and winter is coming, but the room they will be in has been staying around 70-75 (although I haven't spent a winter in this particular dwelling--don't know if that will hold true when it's really cold outside...) Any information from folks who have used the heat rope would be really helpful. I'm thinking about using the rigid white foam insulation with the foil surface underneath the tape so that the heat will be reflected up, but I haven't found any information regarding how hot the heat rope gets (I imagine I will need to use a rheostat and thermostat combined). Does the heat rope need air space like the Flex Watt does? If the cable is flexible enough, I was thinking about slipping some sort of plastic sleeve over sheet rock screws and then screwing them into the insulation to act as guides for looping the heat rope (more closely looped toward the back, farther apart toward the front to provide a temperature gradient). I could make a frame to surround the insulation as well as suspend something (like 12" square ceramic tiles, or glass, or ??? over the heat tape to create a thermal mass and even out hotter spots directly over the rope, as well as providing something to set the tubs on. Does this sound like it would work??

Thanks!
Annie

But I don't have it (yet, I'll take a few tonight).

I use heat rope to heat my 3ft plastic cages, and it works beautifully. The cages have a lip such that you can mount the stuff underneath.

As far as air space, I find that it works better to have the heat rope attached to the surface you are heating, or else very close. The reason is that since it is round, very little of its surface area is actually touching the surface. You need all the conduction you can get. For cages, use metal tape and attach it right to the underside of the floor. For racks or shelves, you may want to router just deep enough so the heater is ever so slightly under the boxes.

For plastic shoeboxes it works great. You will have to experiment with how many runs you make for your animals (i.e. colubrids need less heated surface area than boas, etc).

A dimmer works very well with heat rope. It is more stable than Flexwatt (temp fluctuation-wise) when just using a dimmer alone. You should always have a thermostat to guard against overheating, and those $40 ones are fine if using a dimmer too. A proportional controller works wonders with heat rope.

Bottom line, heat rope takes more effort to setup but IMO works better than Flexwatt for many smaller applications. You can tune the amount of heat by how many runs or loops you make. Obviously, a 10ft boa would need more than a skinny little heat rope, but a shelf or rack of small boxes or colubrid cages can be heated very effectively with it.

I still have some rolls of Flexwatt in the garage, but in the snake room the only belly heat going on is with heat rope. I just like it better.
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Mark G

Assorted rosy boas, some annulata. That's it.

Thanks for the input! Since I don't have a router, do you think my idea about using the foil-surfaced rigid foam insulation underneath, and looping the rope around guide pegs would work? Then I could suspend the tubs on front and back rails over the heat rope so they just clear the rope, instead of using tiles over the heat rope to support the tubs. I could also add strips of something (like wood) that would run front to back between the individual tubs (because they're wider at the top than at the bottom, resulting in a gap between the bottoms of the tubs) to cover the heat rope and minimize heat loss to that air space between the tubs...

Annie

Partial view of one of my cages (bottom view). By looping the heat cable as shown, a nicer heat gradient is produced than by Flexwatt. Ooh that image is blurry. Man I need a decent camera and some skill.

To answer your question, I think buying a router and cutting grooves is a heck of alot easier to do than what you suggest. Or else just use Flexwatt or heat pads. Complex designs usually don't pan out very well.

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Mark G

Assorted rosy boas, some annulata. That's it.