Conflicting information, thermostats, substrates, potted live plants and more....

[Hugsplox]

Welcome to the site!

I wanted to touch on a couple of your questions that I have experience with, so I won't cover your whole post, just some of it and I hope this helps.

As far as the thermostats go, I had a lot of luck with Zoomed and Jumpstart. Jumpstart is a very affordable option and is what I started with; however, when these fail they fail in the on position, meaning whatever heating element they're hooked up to will just stay on and possibly burn your animal. I don't want to scare you into buying a more expensive thermostat, but this is something you should keep in mind, and be sure to use that IR temp gun to check everything daily. (I typically check everything twice a day just for my peace of mind)

With the UTH, you really want to sandwich that temp probe between the UTH and the bottom of the tank. You can always remove the pad, put the probe in there, and reattach it. I see you have a zoomed UTH, and those typically are good for 2-3 "re-sticks." If it doesn't stick you can always use duct table to reattach it, but having that probe between the UTH and the tank is going to be your safest option. Leaving it inside leaves you open to your snake moving it, or peeing on it and causing it to give you bad readings.

Lastly your humidity and ambient questions. I'm in the same boat as you, with duct table and tin foil on the top of my glass enclosure. I have a PVC enclosure on order so this is a temporary issue for me, but I can tell you that spraying twice a day, and making a humid hide saved me a ton of stress. If you have a few dollars to spend, Pangea has a great humid hide that works perfect for a BP, or you can always make your own. I'll let you Google how to do that, as there are a ton of options and they all work about the same. I've also had a lot of luck spraying the top of the substrate until it's wet, and then stirring it up so that wet layer gets pushed down to the bottom. This keeps my snake off wet substrate and as that water evaporates it keeps my humidity right around 60-65% on the cool end. The temps I just had to dial in over time, this is why I set everything up a few weeks before my snake got here. I have a really nice gradient now and a hot spot in the warm hide created with a UTH. So essentially you just try a few different things and see what works for you and your animal.