DIY 28/41 qt Snake Rack - WITH MANY PICTURES

[BHReptiles]

I am working on building a snake rack that is not made of wood and it relatively inexpensive. I'll be editing this as I complete it (it will be done by the first week of August) so you can see the process from start to finish. Also, this idea was originally from YoungTierney on Youtube and I've made some modifications. This snake rack fits 8-28 qt tubs or 4-41 qt tubs and can be expanded to hold 16-28 qt tubs, 8 41 qt tubs or a combination of both. The way I am structuring it, I'm housing both my corns and my ball pythons in the same rack. To compensate for basking temperature differences, the top two shelves will be the pythons and the bottom two will be the corns. Some of the items on my list are duplicates because of this. You can use this for just ball pythons if you would like. Obviously, in that case, only purchase one of each item, not two.

First, you need to gather up your materials:
5 shelve storage unit (I got mine from Home Depot) - this is stackable so if you want to double the amount of tubs it holds, just add another shelving unit.
Amazing Goop Glue
1' self-drilling screws - mine are similar to these: http://www.homedepot.com/Tools-Hardw...1#.UBias_VdCXE
foil tape
8 - 28 qt or 4 - 41 qt plastic tubs
3 sheets of 1/8" or thinner paneling cut at approximately 20" x 32.5" (you can use the scraps to equal one panel if you cut it right)
Approximately 16' of heat rope per panel (approximately equivalent of 3 ft of heat tape per level with some extra for wiggle room)
2x Thermometers and Humidity gauges (only one if this is JUST a BP rack)
2x Thermostats (only one if this is JUST a BP rack)
power strip
casters (if you want wheels)



Procedure - Note: I did this over several days but it can be done in one day.

The first thing I did was purchased all my materials. The foil tape, glue, rack, screws and paneling came from home depot. The thermostats and thermometers I purchased on Amazon and everything else through Big Apple Pet Supply. Once I had purchased the supplies, I unwrapped them.

Once you have the shelves unwrapped, it's time to glue on the paneling. All we did was took the amazing goop glue and put a few dots around the parimeter of the shelves and then placed the panel on the glue and pressed it down for a couple of minutes. Then, we repeated for all the boards except one (the shelf that will become the base of the rack). Then, we stacked them and weighted them down and left them to try overnight.



This is the stack. We stacked it this way so that we would decrease our chances that some of the glue would ooze out of the side and adhere to the next shelf. We didn't want the shelves to get accidentally glued together.



Next, we took the little plastic tubes and measured them. We may have done this harder than it needed to be, but it worked well for our purposes. We measured the inside of the hole from the little lip to the edge of the hole (~1in). Then we measured from the little lip on the inside to the upper edge of the next shelf (we put one tub in and set the other shelf on top to get this measurement). Then, we took that measurement (~8.8 inches) and subtracted 1 inch to accommodate the lip on the upper shelf. Then we measured about 8 inches (we rounded up to give us a little more wiggle room if we messed up cutting) from the bottom of the tube (starting from the end of the tube with the smallest circumference) and made a mark. Using plastic cutters, we cut the tubing and placed them in the hole.



Then we made sure that upper shelf fit on properly and it was snug.




Over the weekend I ordered 16ft of Flexwatt heat tape and 2 6in cords with copper clips (Big Apple Pet Supply) and 2 thermostats/thermometers (Amazon). Remember, if you are only making this rack for one species, you don't need to order 2 of each! Since half my rack is for corns and the other rack is for ball pythons, I have ordered 2 sets each so I can regulate each shelf at the popper temperature for each animal. These SHOULD be delivered by Saturday so I will hopefully get this rack assembled and mess around with the thermostats this weekend so the snakes can move in next week.

The final step in getting the frame ready is pretty simple. We started off by repeating the last step for all the shelves. We screwed each pole to the shelf above and below it so they wouldn't move and made sure the tubs slid in and out. Most of ours we made a little bit tighter so the snakes couldn't push it open. If you have master escape artists like my snakes, this will hopefully come in handy! Here's the finished frame:



As soon as the Flexwatt, thermostats and thermometers come in, I'll be showing how to assemble those as well.

[Andrew21]

There is already a thread on this style rack. But i'd like to know what you are going to attach the heat tape to.

[stupidcracker00]

There is already a thread on this style rack. But i'd like to know what you are going to attach the heat tape to.

Where is it?? Could you post the link?

Thanks,
SC

[LotusCorvus]

Neat! I actually just purchased this same style shelving, but just for shelving my snake tubs XD At least for now, this seems really easy.

[771subliminal]

Where is it?? Could you post the link?

Thanks,
SC

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...r-s-Snake-Rack

[BHReptiles]

I didn't realize there was another thread. I tried to search function it, but I didn't have any luck. I guess it can be deleted if need be. Anyway, for the heat tape, I'm putting a layer of foil tape down on the shelving and then placing the heat tape on the aluminum tape.

[Andrew21]

There are countless threads on melamine racks so i don't think this is a waste. Aluminum tape is extremely easy to tear. It's foil. lol Idk how well that will work.

[BHReptiles]

The way I plan to do it (once I get it all in the mail) is to put the foil tape down on the plastic and then placed the heat tape on top of the foil tape. Then I will tape down the edges of the heat tape with the foil tape. It SHOULD work fine. I'll obviously make adjustments if I come across problems.

[BrianB801]

Can you give a rough price estimate, excluding thermostat and thermometer?

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