Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ok right now i have 3 ball pythons and they need a new home...so i am planning on building one....now i have a few questions...like what materials i am going to need...i know the basic...wood, nails, tubs, etc...but what type of heating element should i buy? and how would i control the temps in the cage? right now the snakes are being kept in my room and they will be here until i move out on my own and then they can be kept in a seperate room, with that being said, i live in a drafty basement in st. louis where winter is coming and it gets kinda chilly. i'm thinking that if i get everything wired and it's still to chilly, i might throw a blanket over the cage to help hold in the heat. now i was looking at flex watt heat tape and was wonder how you can have that wired and not have the house catch on fire...can it touch the tubs themseleves or do you need to sink them into the wood surface? i think that is about it....i don't know the stlye number of the tubs i am going to be using...i think they are a little bigger than what people usually use for balls and such....but they are consider my pets more than anything...i am only going to want one side that is heated. thanks for any input

ray

If your room is chilly you may want to go with using a combination of belly heat with flexwatt and also either put more flexwat along the back of the rack or rope light along the back. I would then use Chris Harpers highly suggested reflectix insulation. When you put belly heat in the rack you will want to do something to alleviate rubbing of the tubs on the flexwatt (this has been known to cause a few fires if not done, due to tubs rubbing repeatedly on a particular location)
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Randall L Turner Jr.
www.aircapitalconstrictors.com

I would recommend that you buy your first rack. Add up your materials, time, flexwatt, etc. Mostly time that it takes to put in all the little details. Then go to AP Cages and get one of their smaller racks that holds 32 qt. tubs and has belly heat.
Winter is coming, your room is cold, etc. This is not a good time to experiment with your rack building skills. You may end up with sick snakes. Balls get respiratory infections and can die from this. Last year we had an unusually long, cold, and wet winter in So. Cal. My racks that had worked for years failed to keep heat. My evening temp drops were greater than I was setting with my controller. I ended up having to wrap 2 inch rigid insulation around the sides and back of the racks. I lost one very good snake to a respiratory infection. Since then I have switched to racks from AP Cages. Get one for now and once you assemble it and see all the details you'll have a better idea of what it takes to build a good rack. Then there is always next summer to test your skills.

Also, look at the racks at Jasons-jungle.com I am ordering the 5 cage unit and the look very good to me. I thing these were recommended by Chris Harper in an earlier post.

...........back heat,a back heated rack in a cool area will not supply enough heat for your BPs.if you do order a rack make sure you tell them it will be in cool area,they may opt for higher wattage heat tape.
i recently made a melmine rack with 3" 6 watt heat tape and routed a shallow channel for belly heat.on the back wall i used the insulation mentioned earlier and it works great,in a cool room you can take out a tub and fell the heat.have fun!

jason also uses thicker plastic which is one heck of an insulator! i have no problem hitting my temps here in indiana, and you can always slap some insulation around it if it gets too cold, advice that applies to every cage & rack out there! insulation is key!

bc

>>what materials i am going to need?

I'll leave the heating issues to others.

Regarding what materials, what sized box are you going to use and how many boxes would you like this rack to hold?

And what's more important to you, keeping it light or saving money?