Very interesting thread, I'm a bit of a worrier so this has been on my mind a lot lately.

I'm looking into building my first rack and using flexwatt for the first time. The current plan is to wire up a strip of heat tape for each shelf separately using a cut-off extension cord for each strip. Then plug all of the cords into a power strip, power strip into the thermostat, and thermostat into my hydrofarm as a backup. Is that too many plugs plugged into too many things?

It seems easier to me than running the tape in parallel, but does adding that powerstrip into my "line" of plugs make things more dangerous? I know next to -nothing- about this sort of stuff. XD