What to use to seal a plywood cage?

you can also use contact paper... the vinyl kind. i've done that on a couple cages.

Ok, i can check for vinyl contact paper and water based sealant at the store. I'm hopefully going to get to the store today or after the 4th at some point. Does the water based sealant or polyurithane make the cage fairly easy to clean periodically? I typically use vinegar and peroxide to clean my corn snakes tanks. Maybe that's just not something I can do with a custom one though. We'll see I guess. Thanks :)

Yeah, if you do it right the cage is easy to clean. Just make sure that you do a good job prepping the wood and get it as smooth as possible. Then just apply coats, let dry, lightly sand, apply another coat. Continue doing this until you have a silky smooth surface. If you don't get it silky smooth, then it will be a pain to clean, but so long as its done right it works very well.

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Originally Posted by Argentra

No heat source will go through wood. What you have to do is install the flex INside the cage, then put vinyl flooring over it and silicone seal the edges. The cord for the heat source (and the probe for the t-stat) can go through a hole cut in the floor of the cage, which will be covered over by the vinyl.

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Have you considered using a radiant heat panel? I think this would be an easier solution than trying to figure out how and where to mount flex watt inside of the cage.

Radiant heat panels might be an option too :) I'm looking eveyrthing up and comparing everything at the moment so I can decide on what I'm going to do. I've gotten a lot of great tips from everyone so far, so that's helped a lot.

Radiant panels are great, but $$$ compared to flexwatt. If you can afford them then it is easier to do. But flexwatt isn't that hard to do correctly in a viv. Good luck!

Yeah, they are a bit pricey, but they have the _huge_ advantage that you can simply drill them into the ceiling of your plywood enclosure, hook up your thermostat, and forget about it. :)

yeah I just looked up the prices on the heat panels. It does sound a bit easier to manage. I'll see what happens as everything is being built.

I LOVE my radiant heat panels and will put them into my three boa cages when I move them up to their 6x2x2 cages. They are easy and cheap to run. The initial cost does not bother me since it is one variable that I don't need to worry about ;)