Raising ambient humidity without having wet substrate

Hello! New here and a fairly new bp owner. I adopted my ball python 'Haida' back in October. His owner was keeping him on hamster shavings and I discovered he had mild scale rot. I have been treating him for that and hes currently in shed now so hopefully he comes out of it looking better.
Right now he is in a 20g long on paper towel to keep things as dry and sanitary as possible but when he better I have a 40 gallon I want to upgrade him into and will be using cocohusk substrate. I know that wet substrate is typically what causes scale rot so I'm wondering how does one raise ambient humidity without making the substrate wet? How thick should it be? Should I mist or pour in water? Mix it up or just let the water seep downwards?

I will also be using a large water dish and probably some moss here and there but some tips to avoid flaring up scale rot in the future would be great.
Thanks

Theres a few different ways that Ive found that worked for me.
You can put the coco in dry, if possible, and then just mist as necessary to maintain humidity.

You can wet the coco to break it apart and then leave it in the sun for the day to dry out (mostly). If its still to damp, hit it with a hair dryer to dry it further.

Add the mostly dry coco and put reptibark or reptichip over top. That way your snake has some dry ssurface area if youre having trouble keeping humidity just right. This is what I did after using the hair dryer method because humidity was still about 80% on one side. With the screen top open and CHE going, within a couple days it was down to 60%.





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Keep things simple:

A 40 gallon tank should be large enough to have a large water bowl. As long as you have a large water bowl on the 'warm' side a good portion of the top of the tank blocked off with a non-porous material (e.g. saran wrap), the humidity released by the water will be enough by itself.

Or just create a humid hide out of a plastic box and moist substrate and don't bother worrying about the humidity of the entire enclosure. :)

Scale rot is NOT caused by wet substrate. Scale rot is an infection caused by bacteria grown from days or weeks of dirty, wet or humid floor conditions. The 'dirty' is the feces, urine or combination from the snake and/or live feeder that were not cleaned up like one would. Humid and wet conditions allow the bacteria to grow, the snake moves around in it, etc. What you need to worry about is fungi. Those effers thrive in wet and humid conditions with little air flow. That is a nightmare to rid off from an animal should they get it inside their body, sometimes requiring aggressive treatment and no cure. So generally, you would want a damp (not wet) substrate for humidity, generous air flow and spot clean as needed and tank clean once a week or every other week depending on how much your snake poops/pees a week.

In your case, once your snake gets the all clear from the infection, you should be safe to use damp substrate like coco fiber mixed with moss. Damp means when you squeeze it, it should not be dripping water but it is wet on your hand. Glass tanks allow air flow because of the mesh lid which also does not retain humidity. Block half off with plexi glass or whatnot, leave the other half open for air flow. It is best not to use lights or CHE which dries up the tank but you can work around that by adding a big water bowl, a humid hide or a humidifier.

Most importantly, remember your snake must feel comfortable enough in their enclosure to eat. Add more than 2 hide in there, lots of foliage and clutter it up so it can feel secure.