Possible way to save money with your flexwatt...

[Amon Ra Reptiles]

Ok so anyone who's been readin my posts knows by now that I'm building a rack and probably tired of hearing questions about it lol. So here's my thought I'm going to build actually two racks a 6 shelf 28qt tub rack which will hold 18 tubs total and a 6 shelf 41qt tub rack which will hold 6 tubs total. But neither will be full right away as I am building to have room for expansion of my collection. I am going to wire my flexwatt parallel from shelf to shelf on each rack which will allow me to cut the clutter down to one plug per rack rather than six.

My dilemma was that I would be heating all six shelves while only have the top one or two shelves full of snakes. So the solution I came up is to wire a small inline switch into the wire between each level (sold at Lowes, HD, or Wal-Mart for like 2 bucks) which will allow me to simply switch off the highest level I'm not using and subsequently all levels below it that way I'm only paying to heat the tubs I'm actually using and still just have one plug.

Let me know your opinions and any unforeseen complications you guys can think of with this. Thanks guys and have a great day.

[fredanthony]

I don't think that would be a problem. I was actually going go do the same on one of my future racks.

[Amon Ra Reptiles]

Annnndd this would be the switch referenced above...

[Egapal]

Annnndd this would be the switch referenced above...

I don't see any issues electrically with that. You could also use male and female plugs to daisy chain them. Should work just fine.

[lk_holla]

would it be too much trouble to just wait until you fill up the rest of the shelves or at least most of them and then splice them all together then? other than that it sounds fine to me. Personally I would have just designed the rack to be able to contain both sizes interchangeably somehow , but I'm just OCD about space thats not doing anything.

[Amon Ra Reptiles]

Well I designed them with empty space to allow expansion and I thought about just not wiring them up until I needed them but I will probably be doing a lot of buying selling and trading so if I need a tub I can simply switch on the heat and if a level frees up in the future I can just turn it back off.

[steveboos]

That seems like a good idea. Currently i have a rack with 8 levels and only 2 snakes in it, so i waste tons of space!!! But your idea should work great in my mind!