Is this big enough?

[Grimmie]

Thanks very much for the tip, i'll head to instore (formaly pundstrecher) now!

[dr del]

Eh up,

Sadly I'm stuffed as my royals are too big for the poundstretcher ones round here (which are approx 6.5" x 13.25" x 29" by my cack handed measurements).

They also have 5 dips in the floor to make the feet -probably ok but just raises them slightly from the heat.

I went into the shop today and discovered I had seriously mis-remembered the prices

the heat cables he sells are made by Rena and are as follows;

100 watt 50 ft (15m) £60.39
50 watt 26 ft (8 m) £41.78
25 watt -- ft (4.5m) £33.70

and dimming thermostats with night/day are £69


So I hit ebay and came up with this;

zoo med heat cables;

100 watt 12m £37 shipped
50 watt 7m £25 shipped
25 watt 4.5m £18.50 shipped
15 watt 3.5m £18.50 shipped

Habistat dimming day/night £45 shipped

23" x 11" heatmat 28 watt £15.40 shipped

All found from 3 ebay shops in the uk - links below;

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/The-Pink-Sk...tological-shop

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/D-C-TORTOISES

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Reptilekeeping

Only the pink skink sells heat cable - but I do remember someone telling me heat cable was more used in europe and I didn't look internationally.

Flexwatt I can't find anywhere - I'm guessing its fallen foul of the electrical regulations/differences or something.

The problems I can see are that heatmats probably need individual t/stats without giving a great deal extra watts/shelf so might cost more.

I had planned to split my racks anyway with a seperate heat for the bottom 2 shelves to be used as hatchling racks. I also need to factor in the price of buying a router or jigsaw. I really envy the American prices for all this stuff

At this rate its coming close to the cost of building the traditional ceramically heated viv's - mind you it would free up a shed load of space in the living room.

The heat cable is about4 mill in diameter and very flexible - so routing might be ok but I dont know if it's supposed to be raised off the floor.It does have stands but he wouldn't let me pull out 50 foot of cable to look at one .


hope some of this info helps someone - and on a happy note one of my python eggs has started to dimple



dr del

[Grimmie]

Congrats on the egg! I can't wait to see that in 3(ish) years time for me!

Yeah i found thoose heat cables and weren't impressed at all. However i did email mgreptiles and they said they could ship flexwatt to the UK :-D for $39.

So 15ft of 11" flexwatt with 10 metal clips comes to $109, about £60.

Thats enough flexwatt to heat 5 3ft x 2ft tubs (the Ikea ones), i think it would be easier that trying to use UTH's, as the cheapest i could find, would cost £26 a shelf (2 x UTH's).

The only snag is that america is 120v and we are 240v, which might be a problem so i've emailed that to ask, my physics isn't that great (i'm a microbiology and Immunology student).

But assuming its ok and you want some, i don't mind adding what you want for your order to mine and then you paypal what your bits costs and half the postage (and whatever it costs me to send you, probs a couple of quid)..... makes it cheaper for both of us.

Also on another note i went to loads of big stores yesterday and turned up nothing on the tub front aswell so it looks like i'm buying Ikea tubs *sigh*.

And finally i went into B&Q to price up wood for my design and it comes to about £30 - £40, depending on the design which i can't finalize till i get the tubs ( getting them tomorrow).

So for my 5 shelf rack which can hold 10 hatching to 3-3.5ft snakes (tubs split in 2 with a wooden divider, i might be able to split them into 3 for hatching size spaces but i need the tubs to get accurate measurements of there size), any bigger females would get there own tub, costs:-

£40 for Wood
£60 for flexwatt (i already have a habistat thermostat (300w max, so will almost be at max load) + 2x Digital thermometer/hydrometers)
£55 for tubs

Total = £155 (about $300 for everyone else reading )
Which, considering my 2ft x 1.5ft tank with UTH's cost me £90, is a bargin!

What do you think?
Also if anyone else wants to buzz in please do!

Graham

[dr del]

Hey,


Glad to hear your making headway - takes me forever to plan these things

You will definately need a convertor to use the flexwatt over here if it's rated 120v (o.n.d. in electronics ) sadly I don't know offhand how much they run to or where you would get them - will have a look later. Don't try and use it without any convertors without asking an electrician as it's highly likely it will either seriously overheat or burst into flames.

Could you find out what the wattage was on the 15 foot of flexwatt? - the higher the wattage/foot obviously the higher possible temps.

The other point of that being you are limited on the amount of flexwatt per shelf to the 2'-3' under the tank and a possible 8" on the back. If the wattage is high enough ( or your rooms ambients high enough) then obviously that isn't really an issue. The reason I was considering the cable is I can have from about one foot to probably around fifteen foot or so under each tub if needed -though if it turns out to be the latter I may need to put on a balaclava and go make a bank withdrawal . I was sort of planning on 5' - 10' of cable per shelf which works out at about 20 - 40 watt per shelf. It's kind of tricky because while the rena version has twice the length it only has the same wattage.

I'm curious why it would take 2 UTH's per shelf -I'm sure we used to sell 3 ft UTh's in the old shop I used to work in so they should be available. In fact we had 4 foot ones I'm sure.

But there is another potential problem with that - if your planning on heating the tubs their full length but only half their width ( guessing on the 15/3 giving the 5 tanks thing) then it won't really give them much of a thermal gradient will it?

I was planning on the tubs sitting so that the long side faced me and was drawn out that way with the heating taking up about one foot of the shelf on either the right or left hand sides with a possible supplemental UTH or loop of heat cable on a seperate thermostat on the opposite side to control the cool side temps.

And on the hatchling shelves I was going to have it running along the back of the enclosure (probably about 4" deep) with the hatchling tubs facing short side out. Mind you this again means a seperate thermostat but does mean it can be turned off when there are no hatchlings to save a few bob.

And yeah the tubs are turning into a right bugger to find - when you get yours could you possible let me know the outside and inside dimensions? - they don't seem to want to tell you the height on the ikea site .

Are you thinking of getting the combined hydro/temp sensors? - cheapest I could find those was £15 but was planning on taking a wander round a garden center next weekend to see if there were any cheaper alternatives.

Do you know of any good links for how to wire up the flexwatt? I'm assuming it would need to be in parallel so one could fail without them all failing and then have some sort of block that connected them all into one cable for the thermostat to connect to.


dr del

[Grimmie]

Right where to start........

I looked up getting a transformer and thats basically out of the question, heres the link to one that would support 300w (15ft, its 20w per foot) of flexwatt:-

http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/SC5300.html

Its £40 excluding VAT & shipping, so it makes flexwatt about £100+ for the rack.
Although i wish i could get my hands on some just to see what would happen if it plug it in to 240v, i'm convinced it would just be able to get twice as hot and so using a thermomstat would mean you'd just have to set it at half the value you normally do to get the correct temp. But i dunno....

Anways looked into UTH a bit more and your right they do do bigger sizes! :-)
Here is a link to one on ebay:-

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Habistat-Heat-...QQcmdZViewItem

Its basically £20, altough i might be able to get cheaper shipping if i buy 5, but with shipping that expensive i shouldn't think i'd get more than £10 of the whole lot. So assuming that, it would cost £90(ish) :-(.

On to the heat cables, how much would be needed to heat one of my tubs? The flexwatt would have provided 60w per tub and the UTH 47w, so i probably need 50w per tub. The cheapest most powerful heat cable u came up with was the 100w (15m) zoo med at £37, so i'd need 3 of them.... ouch....

And on the thermal gradient i'm going to maintain the ambient temp at 75 and hope the heat from the warm side (and from the lower shelves) will help it hit 80....... if not then i need more heating which doesn't even bare thinking about atm.

So the heating front is looking a little sad :-(.

But on a more positive note i got the boxes today from ikea! There pretty good, not got a ultra flat base and would be a pain to clean but its not like we have much choice...

The dimensions are as follows:-
External - 924mm x 545mm x 180mm
Internal - 880mm x 500mm x 172mm

Not as big as hoped but still big enough i feel. Also they were only £6!!! You don't have to buy the lid (which has holes in it) ad other rubbish with it so makes it cheap!

So now knowing the exact tub size i've worked out the exact cost in wood as £40. So physically building the rack is only going to cost me £70 (the same as my 2ft x 2ft tank!)....... its the heating which is going to cost the earth.

Heres a link to wiring flexwatt:-

http://www.arbreptiles.com/cages/flexwire.shtml

And finally i bought my hydro/temp meters off ebay awhile ago.

Graham

[Grimmie]

BTW i just some research on the thermostats, they adjust voltage, so i think my theory of setting them at half what you normally would should work!
BUT if the thermostat fails.......... things burn . I'm going to try and do some research on possible getting a simple voltage breaker and incorperating it into the circuit, so if it goes over say 150v it cuts the power to the flexwatt.
What do you think?
Please anyone who knows about these things buzz in and tell me if i'm right/wrong?

Graham

[dr del]

Hi again,

Great news on the tubs - I wouldn't worry about those sizes as they are almost exactly the same as the sterilite tubs everyone recomends. And great news on the price

Now onto the heating thing ;

Yes it's always going to be the hardest,most expensive bit of the setup sadly.

While your right in that thermostats control voltage they do so to an input from a temperature probe so you would set them at the right level to get the desired temp not half the level. The problem with the way they work is that they control the voltage/current in different ways depending on the style of thermostat;

Dimming,
On realy cold occasions (such as when you first turn it on) they run at full voltage/current until the desired temp is reached then they dimm the output down to maintain it - so while the full 240v would be applied it would be on relatively rare occasions.

Pulse proportional,
Always apply 240 volts but do so in small on/off bursts.

On/off,
Always applies the full 240 volts but in longer on/off cycles (typically a couple of minutes at a time - they are far less stable temperature wise than the others as a result of this).

So the thermostat wouldn't have to fail for things to overload the flexwatt - with any luck it would fail (short out and blow your fuses) rather than catch fire but while they do include a "safety margin" in electrical equipment it's extremely unlikely to be 100% extra load. On the voltage breaker front it would always trip with the above but they don't usually auto turn on so the snakes would cool down.

The way it "should" be connected together is that the thermostat connects to the transformer and the transformer then connects to the flexwatt - this ensures that the flexwatt never gets more than 110 volts in any circumstances.

I think the best way to proceed is to identify the manufacturer of the flexwatt (or the seller might know) and email to ask if it is rated to work with a 240v mains supply.You never know, it just might be, as it is basically the same as the heatmats we buy over here. But then again it might not be and you really want to ask their opinion on what would happen if you plug it in. If you get it in writing from the manufacturers that it is safe for u.k. use then bingo

Worst case scenario it burns your house down and voids your insurance because it isn't rated for u.k. domestic use - and I'm sadly not kidding as that last part came from an electrician friend of mine I asked for advice.


As to the wattage per shelf then that's the sod - there's no way to know really as it depends on so many factors. Basically it's a case of suck it and see . When we used the standard UTH pads we always reckoned they could raise the temps by about 10 degrees c.

The thermal gradient might also be a problem as it only allows 9 inches of "cool" side and 11 inches of "hot" if you heat them along the long side and I would be concerned about the snakes ability to thermoregulate effectively - the heat doesn't just "switch off" at the edge of the heatsource as the tub and air etc hold and transfer some. Also if you placed the matt on the back then you really wouldnt have a cold side at all I think . Might be worth starting another thread asking some of the pro guys in here their opinions on that as I'm used to using radiant heat sources and always tried to make the tanks longer for that reason.

Racks are simple and cheap to run in temperature controled environments with nice high ambients - but their a bugger in draughty old flats in Scotland with no central heating from what I can see.

We might not need 50 watts per shelf - but the only way to tell is to build the rack in such a way that you can change the heating position/ size afterwards - or build a small test rack. That's what I was hoping the cable would make easier as you would only need to increase/decrease the number of loops in the routered out bit of shelf. But if the 2 foot of flexwatt would be enough to hit the 95 max on my hot end (erm the tub's hot end ) then it would work out fine - the problem being how do you add more if it doesn't.

Maybe I should wait till after christmas, ask for a jigsaw/router from santa, and build it in the sure and certain knowledge that the worst that could happen is I end up with a horrendously expensive bookshelf.



dr del

[Grimmie]

Well for better or worse the racks built lol.
I've put pics on another thread.

Well i got an email from the supplier and he/she says as long as the flexwatt used with a thermostat they'll be no problem, it just has the potential to get hotter. So i think i'm going to give it a shot. Now i'm just trying to decide exactly how much i need?? What do you think? I'm going to email a couple of people and ask on here to, hopefully come to a decision.
I might see if i can get a 3" by 1" sample sent to me and test it....

I think i might use another strip to heat the cool side aswell, i think you will definatly have to, the old drafty falt n all .

In regards to a thermostat, a dimming one probably be better? I've got a pulse atm..

And all i used to make the rack was a drill, i got B&Q to cut all my wood for me .

The final cost is as follows:
Wood - £35 ( I paid a bit more to make sure it was strong enough to hold my tv)
Screws - £7 (4.5 x 80mm)
Tubs - £30

Total - £72

Hopefully it will total, with the heat, under £150, which would be beautiful....

Graham

[dr del]

Hi,


Seems to be working out fine.

I tracked down the manufacturer for the flexwatt but all their email inboxes are full and just bounce the email I'm sending back at me - maybe it's some kind of holiday ( I hope).

A sample might be a good idea just to see if it can cope. It certainly seems easy enough to wire up according to that link. Depends on how the delivery charges work out though - he has a lot of good stuff on his site though doesn't he?

On the thermostat thing, yeah the dimming ones are generally considered to be the most stable temp wise and lifetime of the heat bulb but the pulse ones should be fine to be honest. And once you know how much flexwatt each tub will need then you can work out the total wattage your t/stat will need to handle - most of the habistat ones are 600 watts now if you needed to get a replacement for your pulse.

I went to B&Q today only to discover the local one no longer does wood and I'll either need to look elsewhere or go to the larger one further away


The price is working out far better than I had dared to hope though.

And now for the questions - how tight are the tubs? did you leave a couple of mill clearance when building to make room for the flexwatt or just judge it by eye?

And now that thay are in the rack how flexible are the sides? I've got a 2.3 kilo female and am worried they could bend the plastic far enough to get out - or even worse get their head out then get injured.

I asked in the other thread I think but how tall is the final rack?


dr del

[Grimmie]

The tubs are pretty tight, theres about a 4mm clearance atm without the flexwatt, i'd be damn impressed if any royal could get through that . I basically judged by eye as i was building, i built from the top shelf down so basically i filled the rack upside down, placed a tub on and then a shelf, marked where the shelf came to measured 5mm and drilled holes. Seemed to work fine.

Well the sides arn't that flexible but i countered this is 2 ways:
1st) i made the rack wider than the tubs, even i can't bend them enough to get into the tub without moving it.

2nd) the divider is screwed it, as shown in the pic below



So the sides of the tub are basically screwed in place, i was thinking for a bigger snake though you could just use a strip of wood just screwed to one hole (so the wood would be 25mm x 25mm x tub width), so the snake could pass freely around the whole tub (underneath the 'beam' of wood) but also the sides would be solid.

Dare i say it atm i think its escape proof, but i don't have a very large snake to test this. BUT the tubs can easily be lifted higher by getting 2mm think plastic from a hobby shop and cutting feet for the tub.

The rack is 1220 mm high, that includes a storage shelf at the bottom which could easily have another tub on it, it comes to the bottom of my ribs and i'm 6' 1". Its basically 200mm a shelf, so you could easily have 7 if you built it virtually on the ground.

I went on the open plan rack for two reasons:
1) I also read what adam said, which was good enough for me.
2) it was cheaper to build (probably not to heat though ).
3) It looks nicer, in my opinion.

I'm going to wait awhile on the flexwatt, amek sure i get exactly what i need don't want to end up paying more shipping because i forgot something! I've got no rush anyways its going to be at least 2 months before the CITES paperwork it done, then depending on money i might have a balance to pay off aswell.

That sucks on the B&Q front, my local is a trade store so its the size of a aircraft hanger .

Graham