another homemade rack

[TekWarren]

just though I'd post this up for the heck of it. My first homemade rack...actually first rack ever. My step dad helped me build this a few weeks back. It came together quite nicely just how I wanted. Its not completely done, I'm waiting on flexwatt for built in heat still and I'm watching temps to determine if I will need to close off the left and right sides...so far its not an issue but I may have something ready to have on their for winter for added heat enclosure and just make the sides removable. As you can se I only did 3 shelves trying to limit myself to just a couple breeding pairs...WRONG...by next week I will already have more snakes than shelf space again. So when I get the time I'll add two additional shelves. I put down some black marble contact paper which stuck for about a day and it looked really good. But of course it doesn't stick to the wood all that well and when my dad came over to see it all setup he liked it and said it would be easy to get sheet of imitation marble like that so I may go that route to dress it up some.

[Smulkin]

Looking good!

What are the little chucks of wood sticking out of the front of the lower 3 enclosures? Just spacers to allow UTH breathing room?

[TekWarren]

Thanks Smulkin, the main purpose of the wedges and cardboard on the sides that you can't see is to keep the tubs tight to the shelf above it and also to kee p them off the heat pads I'm using temporarily. The 3 tubs with the spacers house some of the newest snakes I have in: a pair of het albino boas and male het albino ball (by next week a het female ball also)...they are all this year's and small so I didn't want any chance of escape. There is about a 1/8" or so gap between the tub and the and shelf above it on most of the tubs..depending on if the floor is bowed or not forcing it up a little higher. My plan is try heating from the back with with the flexwatt and making adjustments as I go such as adding the ply side panels. There ended up being a perfect space at the back of each shelf where I can lay the heat tape and it won't be touching the tubs, the more I think about it though I probably will need the sides so the heat dissipates towards the front rather than out to the near open sides of the rack.

suggests and comments welcome for sure!

Heath

[kavmon]

nice rack, closing the sides will make it darker and heat better. when spacing the shelves if you have something that is 1/16-1/8" thick you could use that to space each shelf while building and then remove when done. a piece of cardboard or plexi would work. basically put tubs down, lay spacer on top and put next shelf down directly on spacer and tubs, pull out spacer when done and tubs will slide right and no big gaps. i've found that belly heat is more effective than back heat. back heat works but i have to set the tstats alot higher.


vaughn

[TekWarren]

That's exactly what did vaughn, for each shelf when affixed I had the tubs in place and then a thin piece of plywood for a spacer. I am expecting the back heat wont be quite enough but I still intend to use it and will add other heat devices as necessary. The room my animals are kept in stays pretty warm so that helps in keep more constant temps.

[TekWarren]

Update! my flexwatt came in from Matt (mgreptiles.com) yesterday but all i really had time to do was cut it to length. After I got home from work I hit the wiring project head on. Following the recommendations on mgreptiles.com and some personal advice from Matt himself I have finally finished installing just minutes ago. I think I did pretty good for my first time with it. I used the direct solder method for attatching the power to the strips and then secured and covered everything in electrical tape. I realized once I was ready to install I had nothing to tack the flexwatt in with. In a bought of frustration and dissapointment I found some double sided tape...and this stuff is STRONG. So we'll see if it holds up to the heat or not and I think this looks better than other ideas I had...its very clean. I have the tstat setup and using seperate temp readings to dial it in acordingly, its going well the temp is getting near where it needs to be but not quite there yet. Will be tuning throughout the night of course.

[kavmon]

i've found out that proportional stats work really good with flexwatt. tape the probe right on the tape and set your temps, double check your tub temps with a thermometer and adjust your stat until it's right. with back heat you really have to bump up the stat temps to get the tubs warm enough. keep us posted!



vaughn

[TekWarren]

I was talking Daniel about that last night, I don't have my sensor right on the heat tape. This is where it should be? The way the rack is setup is with a channel along the back where I ran the flexwatt so nothing is touching, the tubs are stoped by a lip that is part of the shelf frame. The tape is along the bottum back of each level with the sensor currently attatched to the lip which makes it slightly in front of and above the tape itself. I am hoping to have a better reading today after its been running for a bit.


Thanks for the advice.

[TekWarren]

Finally snapped a pic last night to show how I have my heat tape installed into my rack:



This shelf has alot of wires that are not exactly pretty, one for the flexwatt, and two are sensors. The longer on that is taped and hanging is for the tstat although the only reason I keep it there is for emergency shut off the unit has if it gets to hot. I am using a seperate temp sensor for actual calibration which is what another one of the wires is for that you can see there. I was explaining in another post how the flexwatt is kinda of in a "channel" back and below where the tubs touch when they are all the way in. The way my step dad and put these together it created that space which the flexwatt fit perfectly in, its about .5" deep where its layed. I was having issues with constant temps and blaming it on the cheap tstat but now that I have the sensor in a more appropriate place I can see that the stat IS doing its job and IS quite stable. I have it around 95 degrees and it never hits 96. I need to now start watching my tub temps to make sure enough heat will get through them.

[Ken]

Hey, post a pic of the redbone! They're awesome dogs!