I'm ordering the rack from a place called Evolution Reptile: http://www.evolutionreptile.com/econ...free-shipping/
They just said it was birch hardwood plywood, so I'm not exactly sure what KIND of birch. I'm not very handy with tools and the first rack I made (The one I'm using now) could use some significant improvements. That's why I figured that I would just have someone else do the cutting of the pieces.
As for temps, I know it won't make my temps perfect, but it should help some. It will also help in the summer when my room is a steamy 82*F and I'm dying of heat stroke. My hope is that it won't make my flexwatt run all the time and heat my room...just my rack thus lowering the ambient temp in the summer time. We've been in the 50s-60s*F here now and my room is back to a 79*F ambient temp which is fine with me. My corns don't seem to be having any issues. They all eat and shed normally and no one has any signs of illness. Granted...one of my corns survived a very cold winter in an apartment that was in the 50s. All she had was a heat lamp and she never got ill. My biggest concern is them getting URI. I would hate knowing that one of my snakes got sick because I couldn't keep my room warm enough.
When I first started building my collection, I thought about building a floor to ceiling custom enclosure system with multiple enclosures. However, I've got 9 snakes, another coming this week, and racks are more economical for me than a huge enclosure. I do, however, have one corn snake in a terrarium.
That greenhouse thing is pretty nifty! I'll have to look into that. I've basically made my rack out of the 5 shelf plastic shelving system. I've cut down the legs and glued some panel board on the bottom of the shelves so they run flush with my tubs so I don't needs lids. It's functional...but not ideal (The rack is pictured below). The flexwatt runs in the groove closest to the wall. I want to move my adults into better insulated racks and use that one as a quarantine rack or a baby rack.
I may just bite the bullet and get a PVC rack. once I add the cost of paint and and other materials i would need to "modify" the rack and buy tubs for it, I can order one with tubs for only a little bit more. I guess I have a lot to think about!
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