CHE in a wooden viv?

[polychromator]

Hi all! I was hoping for somebody's two cents - I'm assembling my materials for my royal I'm getting in December! He's already a decent size (840g) so I'm not particularly comfortable keeping him on a UTH, due to a combination of his weight and worries about thermal blocking, and the fact that his viv is a wooden one, so the UTH would have to be in the viv with him, and I'm a worrier at the best of times without panicking about him getting burned!

As such, I'm going to be getting a lamp or CHE. I'm more keen on the CHE due to everything good I've heard about them, but I typically only see them used on glass-tank set ups where the lamp is high up out of the way on the mesh top - never in the viv (with a guard) like mine would be.

Is there a go-to way to use a CHE inside a viv, or is it something I should stay away from? And just use a lamp instead?

(His viv is 3 foot long and 1 1/2 foot tall, so I suppose my worries are about the heating element just being too close into his reach.)

[mdb730]

The UTH inside the enclosure could be covered with plexi glass or you can always install radiant heat panels.I have been using RHP inside my wooden enclosures for years, they work great and are installed on the ceiling of the enclosure. They are fairly flat so don't take up a lot of space and for lighting the inside of the enclosure you can use some cheap under cabinet lights from home depot or lowers. I have never used CHE's but have been toying with the idea of tinkering around with some cheap ones from ebay and making my own heat panels.