Just use aluminum foil tape to stick the heat tape down. My warning for that stuff is that it's probably the stickiest tape in the world. Other than that you just tape it down. As for bin sizes... I think most people use 32qt or whatever the next size up is... 42 or whatever. I use 30qt (couldn't find 32qt but there's a pretty small difference between the two) but I would like to move my girls into something a little bigger. Someone else can comment who uses different sizes of bins. I only have 6qt and 30qt.