My wife and I are trying to set up the thermals for this ball python we just got. The previous owners had a UTH and a UVB lamp on a timer and that appeared to work -- UTH on always, lamp on during the day -- but our house has a lot of temperature fluctuation throughout the day, so we're having trouble getting a stable temperature. At the moment we have the UTH, a CHE, and an IR lamp that we turn on at night to counter the temperature drop. This gives temperatures of around 80°F on the cool side and 90°F on the basking side. It requires a lot of manual tuning, though, and the fact that it's a glass-sided terrarium with a mesh lid rather than a door-fronted terrarium doesn't help.

Long-term, we'd like to move to a proper vivarium with top-mounted RHP. What I'm wondering is if there's a way we can get the RHP and thermostat now and use that instead of the CHE with the current terrarium -- it'll be months before we can get the vivarium set up, most likely. As far as I can tell, RHPs are designed to be screwed into the top of a door-front terrarium, but would it be possible to mount it on spacers on top of the screen in the meantime?