I made a heating pad by zig-zagging heat cord on a piece of PVC and then coating it with a really thick layer of epoxy soaked woven fibreglass to make it goanna-proof. There are thermostat and thermometer probes cable-tied to the surface and the cords are protected by conduit, leading to the outside of the enclosure.

Here's a photograph taken the last time I took the nest box apart, around five years ago (without the conduit):


This is what it looks like on the outside of the enclosure. The photograph was taken in spring, so the room temperature was around 18C and the nest box was 31.4 at the bottom. I normally try to keep the heat pad at around 30-32C


I'll have to pull it apart this coming winter and install a new piece of conduit. Every now and then the female obsesses about something she sees as 'foreign' near the nest site and last year she went to town on the conduit, clawing at it incessantly to the point of creating a crack. In a pinch I put some gaffer tape around the crack, but the tape clearly had its own smells that piqued her interest and she obsessed about it even more.

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