Rack system heat escaping

[BornToHerp]

I have only been a member for a short while, but I love this website! All of my questions have been answered by experienced herpers and I feel it's my time to give back. I bought two Animal Plastic T8's and a stand, but decided I wanted to get them higher off the ground for better viewing. Since Animal Plastic doesn't make a rack stand to fit under their T8's, I headed to Home Depot and found that they now sell sheets of 1/2" PVC. I then went to the container store and found some 32 quart bins that allowed me to use the same footprint as the T8's. This is in case I decide to stack higher with either T8's or more racks. Obviously the strength for either one of them depends on the exterior walls, thus the importance for the same footprint. Once the rack was made I was concerned, like many others have been, that the heat tape wouldn't warm the container sufficiently. Although my snakes are in a finished basement the temperature in the winter is only 65-68 degrees (finished basement is heated by electric heat $$$$$). Sure enough I hooked the two strips of heat tape to my Helix, but the ambient temperature in the containers only went up a few degrees. Trying to save a buck like all of us, I tried a bunch of solutions that failed, but I thought if I could stop the heat from escaping from the front of the rack system I might be able to achieve the temperatures I was looking for. I bought 3/4" foam insulation board, cut it to size, sprayed the front black, and expoxied small plastic drawer knobs to the foam board (epoxied them to keep the weight down). The foam board costed me a few bucks, the knobs were 97 cents each, and I had some two part five minute epoxy on hand. I put the boards in place, left them in place for 24 hours, and left a digital thermometer on the hot end and cool end of the tubs. To my astonishment when I came back the hot end read 92 degrees and the cool end read 82 degrees. Hooray!!! I check on all my snakes daily so there will plenty of fresh air getting to them when the boards are removed. I have attached pics. Hope this helps!

[BornToHerp]

Of course the images didn't post. How can I upload them from my iPad?

[BornToHerp]

[BornToHerp]