Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well,

most of the stuff has come in now. The glass track from Outwater.com came in and it's perfect! Was an easy transaction, they shipped it the next day, and it's exactly what I wanted. Couldn't have been easier. Also got my Big Apple BAH-1000 thermostat in 3 days earlier than expected. It's a pretty sweet unit for the price, 1000 watts total power and built in emergency cutoff at 110 degrees (think it's 110, may be slightly lower).

So here's a shot of the glass track install, I really needed more clamps so I could do more than 1 section a day, ha ha. It takes a bit of figeting to get it lined up perfectly as it likes to scoot around as you add clamps, but once it's all lined up it's just a matter of waiting overnite for it to set.

You can see the vents and also the lower cage you can see the light installed in the middle.

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

And a closeup of the track. The wood under the track is a series of paint stirrers to hold everything nice and level and keep even pressure across the entire track.

I am using the Loctite "powergrab" adhesive and like it so far. It's much thicker than caulk so you can just press it to the cage and it will hang by itself while you get and position clamps. ** You do have to be aware that it has a 15 minute working time as far as moving the parts you are trying glue, after that you would probably have to pop it apart, if you could.**

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

A shot of the vent installs in the second cages. Note the layout in pencil showing the outside of the vent, and then the measurements for the louvers as the inside vent is actually inverted (inside out) as the aluminum is pretty sharp and you wouldn't want it in the cage with your animals.

**NOTE: The small "indexing" hole at the top center of the cutout hole. I wanted the vents to fit flush with the tops of the cages so I marked on the inside where they would go, and drilled the hole through the mounting hole furthest from the top of the cage (the bottom middle hole on the vent). That way when I flipped the cage face down, there were the two "indexing" or "referencing" holes that I could line up the vents and trace / measure the actual hole to cut. This is a picture of the hole that results from the careful measuring and then cutting out.

You should use a jigsaw with a pretty fine wood blade to avoid splitering the melamine coating, and will have to drill a 1/2" hole in each of the four corners to let you turn the saw and cut 90 degrees from your current cut.

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

A quick shot of the top outer vent in, and the marking and second hole for the lower cage. Note how important the "indexing" hole I drilled from the inside is for laying out and measuring the cut areas on the backside. It's as simple as noting which way is up, and then laying the vent over the "indexing" hole and then tracing the outer perimeter.

The vents are installed both on the outside and the inside of each cage. The original plan was to just do the outside, but this left a gaping hole you could see from the inside. Then I thought about just doing the inside, but this left the gaping hole on the outside, not a big deal, but I chose to clean it up with a vent to cover it.

All the vents are installed so that the louvers are pointing upwards to aid in letting out any excess heat buildup. I potentially will have a little extra heat from the built in flouresent lights in each cage, so the extra large vents should take care of it for me. If I determine that it's too much vent, I can always tape it off to make the opening smaller.

Note that the vents also have the built in screens, to keep critters out of your house, or in this case in their cages.

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

Hey, it really looks like you know what you are doing! VERY NICE! It does take allot of clamps, doesn't it? Derek