Heat tape question for DIY rack

[bdevo]

Is there any negative affects to snaking the heattape through the rack instead of doing each individual layers?

Just wondering because this makes it easier by only having one chord then?

Thanks Alot

Brandon

[LizardPants]

You will end up using a lot more heat tape than you need, and the power consumption will be higher.

[bdevo]

Ok, substantially higher? and do you think it will affect the heat at all? if anyone has ive been looking at the DIY stickies i dont really see any amazing pictures of the heat part of the racks or that great of explanations sorry just a newb trying to get things right!

[HypoPita]

Yeah, it will technically be higher, but really its only an extra foot and a half long for a 5 bin sideways rack like my Boaphile; which snakes the heat tape. A foot of 4" flexwatt only uses 8 watts. So, with lets say you have an extra 2 feet of heat tape. That is 16 watts, max, that you are wasting. Looking at my rack right now, it is only needing 45% of the maximum power, which brings things back down to just over 7 watts.

So less efficient, maybe, but it is providing a little additional side heat, and only using 7 watts. If I was making it myself, I probably would not snake it, but really...it's not a huge deal.

Hope that helped.

[bdevo]

Ok sweet thanks! Just wanted to make sure the tape being bent like that wouldnt affect the heat at all!!

Thanks

[OhhWatALoser]

I have a rack I got from craiglist that has the heat tape snaked through it and its the worst rack I have as far as keeping temps goes. it can work but the temps between the bottom left tub and the top right tub (as distance of about 3 feet) can be 8+ degrees at times. so i wouldn't suggest it personally.

You can still have 1 cord. how I have been building my racks is, I lay my tape for each shelf and wire all the pieces together using small wire (like #18) and then have a cord just come off the last piece of tape.

[NewParadigms]

The potential problem wouldn't be with the length itself, but rather if you have some kind of issue with the heat tape, or the connection, it will ALL go out at the same time leaving all of your snakes cold. Also, if you want to service something you can't take a single strip out, you have to take out the whole thing. It would probably work fine, but personally I think it's worth the hassle to run separate wires.

[bdevo]

Both very valid points thank you so much!! My brother in law is gonna build it. Just trying to get good info for him since hes practically a carpenter!