Rack Duty

My husband, myself and our friend are getting ready to build a kick ass rack for our ever growing collection. However, heating source ideas? We were thinking heating tape; however the Big Apple Pet Supply makes it sound that I will have the same amount of wires (if not more) than if I used a heating pad.

So heres the question: How do me make less of a fire hazard with not so many wires, if its even possible? :confused::confused::confused:

Looking at your collection of 4 BP's I'm guessing you want to build a vertical rack of like 5-6 incase you add more. Easiest way for that is back heat. You can get like 4 feet of it with 1 wire to heat the whole thing. Now if you want belly heat that is a whole different story.

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Originally Posted by Evilme5229

We were thinking heating tape; however the Big Apple Pet Supply makes it sound that I will have the same amount of wires (if not more) than if I used a heating pad.

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Of course they would say that. I don't own a rack yet, but I have been researching them and from what I can tell, most of the 3 and 4 tub models look like they have one long piece of flexwatt that runs across the shelf, up the side, across the next shelf, and so forth, and only has one wire. I haven't gotten into the specifics of flexwatt yet, but I'm pretty sure you can actually run a fairly long piece on each wire...

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Originally Posted by MitsuMike

Looking at your collection of 4 BP's I'm guessing you want to build a vertical rack of like 5-6 incase you add more. Easiest way for that is back heat. You can get like 4 feet of it with 1 wire to heat the whole thing. Now if you want belly heat that is a whole different story.

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Oh theres more coming. I have deposit on 2 yellow bellys that I need to sep. I'm getting a cinny in the next couple of months on top of 2 lessers. Not to mention right now I'm in the process of breeding my ghost and norm. I'm putting deposit on another norm. female. Its going to be a big rack.

So without any that I keep, I'm looking at 10 just in my collection. i want my rack to be roughly to fit 18 tubs - Roughly.

I want the belly heat. Thats where my problem lies.
:8:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Evilme5229

Oh theres more coming. I have deposit on 2 yellow bellys that I need to sep. I'm getting a cinny in the next couple of months on top of 2 lessers. Not to mention right now I'm in the process of breeding my ghost and norm. I'm putting deposit on another norm. female. Its going to be a big rack.

So without any that I keep, I'm looking at 10 just in my collection. i want my rack to be roughly to fit 18 tubs - Roughly.

I want the belly heat. Thats where my problem lies.
:8:

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Just wire everything in parallel. As long as you wire it correctly and have everything covered, it should not be a fire hazard.

Does anyone have any pics of their racks showing what was used wire wise for the heat tape?

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Originally Posted by Evilme5229

Does anyone have any pics of their racks showing what was used wire wise for the heat tape?

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I just bought extention cords and cut off the female end.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3606/...b90bccf01e.jpg

Here Tim did a wonderful job of showing the easiest was I've found to wire something like that..

http://baileyreptiles.com/cb70rack.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Evilme5229

Oh theres more coming. I have deposit on 2 yellow bellys that I need to sep. I'm getting a cinny in the next couple of months on top of 2 lessers. Not to mention right now I'm in the process of breeding my ghost and norm. I'm putting deposit on another norm. female. Its going to be a big rack.

So without any that I keep, I'm looking at 10 just in my collection. i want my rack to be roughly to fit 18 tubs - Roughly.

I want the belly heat. Thats where my problem lies.
:8:

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You can make a it work. Put 4 tubs across and 5 shelves high. Use like 2-3 feet of flexwatt for belly heat and you only have 5 wires running with no splicing or anything. All them attached to a 6 socket surge protector and have that surge protector connected to the thermostat. That is 20 tubs of any size depending on how big u build it then u can make a 2 tub across by 6 tubs high for a baby rack with back heat seeing they won't be in there to long.

I would personally do a larger rack with a wide variety of tubs that will fit in it. I did the measurements a while back, so i forgot the exact dimensions. But you can fit a 28 qt sterilite and a 12 qt sterilite tub side by side and it equals the length of a 41 qt long ways. Do some reasearch and with about 4 sheets of melamine, you can make one sick nasty rack with 6 or 7 shelfs that can posslibly hold 21 15 qt tubs, 7 28qts and 7 15 qts, or just 7 41 qt tubs.

If i can tell you one thing, when you own a bunch of different sizes of ball pythons, trying to find the right tub and not having to have a whole new rack for it. Right now i have an 8 shelf rack that holds 2 15 qts or 1 28 qt and i love how i have so many options. Just this week i am having a 5 tub 41 qt rack being built for me and i feel this will solve my problems for having 2300 gram females and 230 gram juveniles in a reasonable amount of space.

Even though your going to have a few more snakes than i do, i hope you can find the perfect setup to hold all your animals and just using a long strip of flexwatt down the back or on the belly. Just get a thermostat with a 6 repceptacle input and use either 3 inch or 11 inch flexwatt for the heating, you can't go wrong and will most likely cost you under $350 for homes for over 20 snakes.