New! Snake! Rack!

It's a good lookin rack. 70 % humidity with four big females on a row, could cause sagging. a 4000 gram snake is around 10 pounds plus water bowl. breeding season you will have males in with them. a thin support in the middle makes a huge difference. I understand putting in snake room and I think temps will be ok. what ever size heat tape you use, make sure you use one of the high end thermostats. good luck don

Hey Don,
I tried this same design and was very upset. I spent close to the same amount you did and used basically the same design. Mine had center supports and the thing lasted me about 2-3 days before I counted my losses and had a nice $140 fire. I found that the pine twisted and the bins stuck (I used 1 1/2" wood screws and wood glue on every joint and about double the wood with half the size rack). Also I found that with how open the rack was in my 76*F room my 1' section of 11" heat tape could only get the bins to about 80*F inside.

Now I use all enclosed melamine racks. The thermostats aren't working a fraction as hard and they look a lot better.

Hopefully this doesn't happen for you. Good luck :).

Thanks for posting, Jeremy.

Jeremy, another really valid point regarding how open racks tend to use a whole bunch more heat to maintain normal temps than their closed-in counterparts. I have homemade (lidless) melamine racks (available for viewing at my site) with Herpstats. I rarely find them using more that 10-20% power to maintain 95 degrees in a 75 degree room.