This kind of heat cable is designed to kick in only below freezing so I decided to take off the built in thermostat that tells it to turn on and off and then tried splicing the wire back together a couple different ways. First I thought the hot wires were the single wires inside the small tube and spiced it to the one that I know is the hot wire from where it connects to and the ground to the outside wires around the single wire in the tube. That did not work, than I figured it must be the other way around, so I tried that and still nothing. Does anyone have experience converting this wire to use with reptiles, and yes I do have it plugged into my own thermostat.