DIY Plywood Cage Question

I am in the planning stages of building a cage for my Ball Python. I'm thinking 4x2 and I'm still trying to decide how tall it should be. I'm planning on sealing the inside with drylock. My problem at the moment is how I should heat it. A radient heat panel seems to be a good option. I'm just not sure if I should have some sort of UTH/flexwatt in the cage and how to go about that. I saw a build where they put linolium over the flexwatt? It was posted on a diffrent forum and looked very nice. If anyone has any tips for DIY cages I would love to hear them!
Thanks,
Max

You should be fine with just a radiant heat panel just make sure it's the correct size for your application. Someone will chime in with the name of the person to contact to figure out proper sizing. I'm at work and am drawing a blank. I went a little bit bigger than required so I am never running near 100% in the hopes that it makes the panel last longer. As to height if your doing a heat panel you don't need much height. I made mine 18"and it works great. BP's aren't natural climbers. Check out my builds for tips.

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Originally Posted by gunkle

You should be fine with just a radiant heat panel just make sure it's the correct size for your application. Someone will chime in with the name of the person to contact to figure out proper sizing. I'm at work and am drawing a blank. I went a little bit bigger than required so I am never running near 100% in the hopes that it makes the panel lasts longer. As to height of your doing a heat panel you don't need much height. I made mine 18"and it works great. BP's aren't natural climbers. Check it my builds for tips.

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I believe you're referring to Bob at Pro Products

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Originally Posted by Craiga 01453

I believe you're referring to Bob at Pro Products

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That's it. Thank you

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Originally Posted by gunkle

That's it. Thank you

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Thought so....

And OP, I think investing in a RHP is the best way to go. The enclosure will do a great job of insulating the heat and the RHP will be the most economical to run while providing consistent accurate temps for you.

You won't need to run any belly heat and maintaining a proper gradient.

Definitely talk to Bob at Pro Products. Make sure you have as many details about the enclosure as possible, as well as avg temps in the room the enclosure is in, etc.. This way he can guide you to the right size RHP for your setup.

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Originally Posted by gunkle

You should be fine with just a radiant heat panel just make sure it's the correct size for your application. Someone will chime in with the name of the person to contact to figure out proper sizing. I'm at work and am drawing a blank. I went a little bit bigger than required so I am never running near 100% in the hopes that it makes the panel last longer. As to height if your doing a heat panel you don't need much height. I made mine 18"and it works great. BP's aren't natural climbers. Check out my builds for tips.

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Your cages look great! I really like the black on the inside of the BP cages, it looks very nice. I'm thinking 80 watts for the heat panel.

Instead of dry lock look into pond shield. I personally havent tried it but people make plywood fish tanks using it.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

Pond shield is what I used in my enclosures. 2 went great, the green one was a pain. Not sure if it was an old batch or my room temps were too cool but it cured very fast and doesn't look as nice but all setup it's hard to notice the issues.

Pond shield is literally the hardest thing to work with. I ruined my first batch because I was so upset with it. But it works great. So I mean, it's a give and take.

I would recommend Pond Shield also. Can be a bit awkward to work with but when done right it looks great.

I use either mats or bulbs in all my custom builds. For a BP, I would go 18" high with a mat or 24" high with a bulb (and use a guard). I don't use the Radiant Heat Panels in my enclosures so I can't really help you with that one but going from previous comments, sounds like they work well. Might look into it myself in the future.

I wrote up how I go about building my custom enclosures. You can check them out here:

https://www.reptilerange.com/how-to-...ile-enclosure/

Let me know if you have any more questions and I will try to help.

Liam.

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Originally Posted by mechliam

I would recommend Pond Shield also. Can be a bit awkward to work with but when done right it looks great.

I use either mats or bulbs in all my custom builds. For a BP, I would go 18" high with a mat or 24" high with a bulb (and use a guard). I don't use the Radiant Heat Panels in my enclosures so I can't really help you with that one but going from previous comments, sounds like they work well. Might look into it myself in the future.

I wrote up how I go about building my custom enclosures. You can check them out here:

https://www.reptilerange.com/how-to-...ile-enclosure/

Let me know if you have any more questions and I will try to help.

Liam.

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Thank you for that link, it is layed out very well and is very easy to understand. Pond shield seems to be the way to go. So I'm thinking 3 x 1.5 x 1.5 with a RHP with black pond sheild on the inside. I'll probably use glass for the doors as well.

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Originally Posted by TopazEye

Thank you for that link, it is layed out very well and is very easy to understand. Pond shield seems to be the way to go. So I'm thinking 3 x 1.5 x 1.5 with a RHP with black pond sheild on the inside. I'll probably use glass for the doors as well.

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My suggestion for the pond shield is mix it in really small batches, way smaller than the instructions suggest.

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Originally Posted by wnateg

My suggestion for the pond shield is mix it in really small batches, way smaller than the instructions suggest.

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Would this be just in case I accidentally ruin a batch? It seems people tend to have a hard time with it.

I also had another DIY question and I didnt really want to start another thread. If I wanted to build a rack completly out of wood (2x4s and Plywood) could I safley use flexwatt on the shelves or would this not work? I'm not sure exactly how safe that would be as most racks are made of melamine or plastic/PVC.

I initially made two 6'x2'x3's (LxWxH), heated with a 120 watt RHP on one end and 100 watt CHE on the other. With a space heater, I didn't really need the CHE anymore, and nowadays I try to put basking areas closer to the panel vs trying to heat all the way to the ground. The cages were originally for my 3.5' bp and 6.5' boa, but the bp was switched out for the retic (7.5'-8.5' while she was in it), and then eventually destroyed when our old trailer was vandalized. I plan on building some new enclosures (hopefully with better planning haha). My bp is very arboreal, and loves to climb, so he benefited from all the space.

I treated with water-based polyurethane, and that worked well for me...I just didn't treat the outside, and that was their downfall when they were left outside in the rain. XD Each individual piece of wood requires a different amount of coats, but the poly is non-toxic once dry and does very well at keeping normal amounts of moisture out. I never tried something like a BRB, but it withstood about 4-5 years of wet EcoEarth and any bowl tippings without damage before the incident that destroyed them.

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Originally Posted by TopazEye

Would this be just in case I accidentally ruin a batch? It seems people tend to have a hard time with it.

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It's because it starts to harden very quickly, so if you're doing multiple coats, you don't want to waste your mix. The instructions said you can use 1 coat, but I did 3 coats, and I wish I could've done a 4th.

Another question, sorry if I'm being annoying. If I made a wood rack and used plywood as the shelves, could I paint the exposed side with drylock/ pond sheild to protect from humidity? This would be for a lid-off sort of rack with 40-50% humidity.

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Originally Posted by TopazEye

Another question, sorry if I'm being annoying. If I made a wood rack and used plywood as the shelves, could I paint the exposed side with drylock/ pond sheild to protect from humidity? This would be for a lid-off sort of rack with 40-50% humidity.

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I would think you should only need to protect the underside of each self as that would be the"lid" of each tub. Other than that I would think there would be enough open air flow to make the humidity a non issue. So I would recommend at least sealing that portion.
Ask as many questions as you can think of that what we are here for. And as for heating with flex watt or something similar I wouldn't be concerned with it on a wooden rack as you shouldn't be setting it for more that say 98°F. So the wood won't get hot enough to catch fire or anything like that. Just remember UTH's are for belly heat and not meant to raise the ambient temps by more than a degree or two so make sure your room is going to maintain proper temps all year long.

If you're going to be building plywood cages do yourself a favor and buy the Kreg pocket jig. You will never find a better way to build plywood cages.