yea i understand what you're sayin and i do want to get the rack but man i think my bill is gonna be out the roof it already costs enough to run the heater LOL now a heater and a rack. i understand the thermal gradient situation but when emailing VPI they emailed me back stating

"We don't have to heat or cool very much (most of the year, anyway) to keep our rooms at 78 at night and 80 in the day. We have found that our snakes in our building do best at those temps without any additional basking heat.

We have used heat tapes and heat pads to create substrate-heated basking areas in the past. However, after about 10 years of experimentation we realized that our snakes simply do better without any supplemental heat. The one exception is that we do provide post-ovulatory gravid boas and pythons with substrate heat, not too much, but an area of heated cage floor that's about 86 to 89 degrees.

There are several problems with substrate heat, but the most common problem of which most keepers are unaware is that substrate heat significantly raises the temperature of the air in most cages. This can cause a variety of problems relating to feeding and breeding. One way to avoid the problem is to not leave substrate heat turned on all day--put it on a timer and use it only a couple of hours daily.

We have had no problems doing as we have done. We have good growth and excellent breeding. We do feed the snakes less often and smaller meals than when we kept them warmer, but that also means they defecate less often--it's all good!"

Dave

so i guess the "mumbo jumbo" about basking spots isnt really a necessity unless you have a gravid female, which i dont have intentions on breeding so it wouldnt apply to me. still i'll check into a rack system, because i am tired of stacking and unstacking these tubs like building blocks LOL