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.