frost king heat cable questions

[kylearmbar]

This kind of heat cable is designed to kick in only below freezing so I decided to take off the built in thermostat that tells it to turn on and off and then tried splicing the wire back together a couple different ways. First I thought the hot wires were the single wires inside the small tube and spiced it to the one that I know is the hot wire from where it connects to and the ground to the outside wires around the single wire in the tube. That did not work, than I figured it must be the other way around, so I tried that and still nothing. Does anyone have experience converting this wire to use with reptiles, and yes I do have it plugged into my own thermostat.

[The Serpent Merchant]

Can you post a picture of the wires? I'm not familiar with the product you are using, but I might be able to figure out what is what from a picture.

[kylearmbar]

Im trying to but am having trouble for some reason it's telling me error occurred and to consult the webmaster. Anyway one end is a basic single cord with the Maine white ground cable in it, a green ground, and the black hot wire. The other end is two cables joined together both have a single wire in the middle with a clear platic over them with wires on the outside. Think of an 8 then with a dot in the middle of each loop that's a clear single wire and outside that there are other wires.

[The Serpent Merchant]

How to post pictures: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...with-pictures)

To be completely honest though, I really wouldn't recommend using this product with reptiles. Heat tape is cheap, and is known to be reliable.

http://www.reptilebasics.com/heat-tape

[TheSnakeGuy]

Products like this are not meant to run hot for long periods of time as is needed for reptiles. Tampering with it doesn't help that I'm sure. Yes the product is called "heat cable" but it needs to viewed as what it is, "anti-freezing cable". I do not recommend using something essentially homemade for your reptiles. Go with THG heat tape or an under tank heater hooked up to a thermostat.

[kylearmbar]

Heat tape, even the highly praised flexwatt is not designed for reptiles, and I've read good things about others having tried what I did. I did in fact get it to work, I conected the inside wires and the outside wires together and connected them to the hot wire, then with the other wire I did the same thing but to the grounded wire. It has been holding steady at 90 degrees with my thermostat only varying about half a degree. I will let it run for 24 hours to see if there are any spikes before I put my animals on the rack I just made.

[Tannerrrtx]

Heat tape, even the highly praised flexwatt is not designed for reptiles, and I've read good things about others having tried what I did. I did in fact get it to work, I conected the inside wires and the outside wires together and connected them to the hot wire, then with the other wire I did the same thing but to the grounded wire. It has been holding steady at 90 degrees with my thermostat only varying about half a degree. I will let it run for 24 hours to see if there are any spikes before I put my animals on the rack I just made.

would love an update and a "how to" ive been looking into it for mine also