Welcome, and congrats on your new ball python!
My recommendations based on your description (of which you can take'em or leave'em):
-Keep a humid hide only: raising the humidity of the entire enclosure (if not done properly) can easily result in a respiratory infection. From experience: a 40 gallon tank is troublesome to balance the humidity properly.
-Keep a water bowl large enough for the ball python to completely submerge in.
-Your UTH should be on the outer bottom of your tank with your thermostat probe sandwiched in between the UTH and the glass.
-Measure the temperature on the inside of the glass with a temp gun and adjust your thermostat on the UTH so that the temperature is 88`F on the inside of the tank: at that point you can add a layer of dry substrate. (and do not adjust the temp.)
-Keep your ambient temps above the substrate stable by using ceramic heat emitters (instead of bulbs: which have an uneven heat distribution)-all heating elements should regulated by thermostats (not rheostats)-while a UTH is nice, it is not a substitute for ambient heating.
Anyhow, my two cents...I keep a ball python or two....
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