Am I being too picky? 3 inch flex doubled up...

[JasonG]

Is it me or does 3 inch flexwatt not provide a big enough heat spot on tubs 28 quarts or larger?

In my bigger rack I have doubled up the 3 inch tape because I always felt just 3 inches of a heat spot is too small. But looking at others racks, I see some people only use the 3 inch...

My wife thinks im being too picky/anal about it, what do you think?

[littleindiangirl]

Depends.

In our snake room we heat it to 83 year round, so they only get the 3 inch flexwatt.

Some people with cooler rooms, or not using a rack can use the larger size 11" or double up the 3" flexwatt to give their snakes a bigger hot spot.

[JasonG]

My room right now flucuates between 77-80... But I've always personally felt that 3 inch spot was just not big enough... I guess its up to one's own personally prefence... I was just curious if I was being too anal about it... I tend to pay attention to the fine details almost to a point of being obessed.

[m00kfu]

If your enclosure holds heat well, that hot spot isn't going to be all the heat they get. Obviously that 3 inches will have a higher surface temperature than the floor around it, but it's also going to raise the ambient temperature above it. Like Connie was saying, our snake room is heated to 83 degrees all year long. With that 3" hot spot, it raises the ambient in the back of the tub to around 90 degrees or so.

[muddoc]

I would say, give the 4" flexwatt a shot, and mount it about 3 inches from the back of the tub. You should be fine with that. As others have said, the ambient temp of your room makes a big difference. We keep our room at 82 degrees, and I have some 3000 gram girls that do fine on a 15" piece of 3" flexwatt (set to 92 degrees).

[JasonG]

I would say, give the 4" flexwatt a shot, and mount it about 3 inches from the back of the tub. You should be fine with that. As others have said, the ambient temp of your room makes a big difference. We keep our room at 82 degrees, and I have some 3000 gram girls that do fine on a 15" piece of 3" flexwatt (set to 92 degrees).

Thanks Tim...

Next big rack I build thats what I am going to do. I guess I can chalk it up to being such a noob when I built the first rack. Its like one of those commercials... If I only used the 4 inch instead of the 3... LOL I'd save so much on my car insurance... LOLOL

[syearout]

I use one strip of 4in, my snake room hangs about 75, and my hot sides stay 88 all the time.

[BigDog]

Check the wattage...some 3" tape is 10 watts and that works great...I have seen 3" tape that is 3 or 4 watts and have avoided it...

[RichardA]

I run 3" on my larger tubs.....like Tim said just in a few inches from the back. I use mulch to that helps some as it absorbs in some heat better then paper. Seems to work fine around here for me......

[Alice]

Animal Plastics currently uses 3" tape on their racks if you request heat tape. They may be switching to 4" because they've seen supply problems with the 3". It would seem that if they use it that it would be sufficient; however, I agree with the comments about the ambient temp in the room playing a role.