New Setup - Pre Snake!

[skiajl6297]

I am a new member, a new gear owner, and soon to be new owner of a beautiful Hypo Pastel Enchi from Garrick at Royal Constrictor. I wanted to share my current setup, discuss some of the issues I am having with calbration, and see if anyone has any suggestions and feedback on my temps/measurements before I "go live".

Snake is a female, roughly 150g

My gear:
Showcase Cage 24" x 16" x 18"
Undertank heat pad
150W CHE
Herpstat 2 - controlling both heat sources
Hot hide, cool hide, water dish
Eco Earth substrate
IR Thermo

I have the cage in a relatively cool and variable temp living room, hence the high wattage heater. I am still dialing in the heat settings, but am close. I have dialed in a stable humidity with misting and moistening substrate, but am still struggling with temperatures.

I have the UTH taped to the bottom of the cage (with the Herpstat probe sandwiched between the UTH and the bottom of the cage for thermo control) with a bath tile underneath it to protect the wood table it is placed on. I can dial this in to a perfect 91 for belly heat under the substrate under the hide. There is a bit of clearance between the bottom of the UTH and the tile for what it is worth - is that reccomended? I had considered crumpling up some aluminum foil to help keep the pad pressed firmly against the bottom of the cage, since the probe is keeping some of the pad from actually touching the floor of the cage.

I struggle with ambient temps largely due to what I suspect is the temperature of the room. What is the best place to set the CHE controlling probe? Should it be directly under the hottest part of the CHE, or slightly offset? When it is slightly offset, it takes more heat from CHE to get the probe up to temp, which can cause overheating of some of the substrate (mid 90's measured in small area directly under CHE with IR thermometer). But when I place the probe directly under the CHE in this hot zone, and dial in the perfect temp, it holds a nice temp, but the cool side of the cage drops down to the low 70s!

My question - what is the ideal placement for the CHE monitoring probe? Should it be buried under a thin coating of substrate? Is it better to have one zone perfect, one hot hide dialed in, surface temp on hot side dialed in, but with a too-cool cold hide side? Or better to overheat a small area slightly to get the ambient temps just up to 75 on cool side, but possibly mid 90's in the hottest zone?

The big issue I seem to have is that both the UTH and the CHE are on the same side of the tank! Part of me wants to just use the CHE for the hot side, and the UTH to keep the "cool" side just right, but that seems like not an ideal solution, as the "belly heat" seems to be required, and an overhead CHE isn't going to heat the floor of something shaded.

I am still fine tuning here, but would appreciate any feedback anyone might have. Looking for goldilocks zone!

Adam