Introductions....

Bear in mind that a UTH isn't designed to heat an entire terrarium - it's primary purpose is to create the heat gradient and hot spot. Depending on the ambient temps in your house, you may need a space heater in the room where you keep her, or another heat source (ceramic or otherwise) for the actual ambient temp increases.

Ok. I will turn on my space heater then. Hubby is talking about getting a red tailed boa so we may end up building a rack system (hubby is a journeyman carpenter). I guess I will look into better heating options then and use a spce heater in the room now. Right now I have one side of the tank at 88 degrees and the other is 82-84 degrees.

So I think the temp is ok, but that's with that white bulb going. I know that she doesn't like it because she never goes to that side of the tank. Although she may not be used to actually having it warm in her tank. Her previous owners didn't really know what they were doing. One side of the tank was around 80 degrees and the other was around 70 degrees. So maybe she needs time to get used to a warmer tank. They also didn't keep track of humidity either.
She would drink a lot of water at first, or run through her water dish. Now that I am keeping the humidity up (55ish) for her, she doesn't spend so much time near the water dish.

When I bought her a decent hide, she didn't know how to get into it. She kept trying but couldn't figure it out. I had to put her in the hide and set it on top of her. Now she loves it. She's in there all the time instead of trying to figure out how to escape. I guess that lets me know that I'm doing an okay job with her.