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BPnet Veteran
Re: Baby steps..help?
I just did this over the last week or so, and I'm wishing I'd either sprung for the ofeeshal crimpers, or else soldered the dang things. Using regular pliers, I was too wimpy to get good connections and wound up beating on them with a hammer, which mostly worked but I still have two shelves that are not heating up.
Bean farm sends a little flier that made things clear for me.
Things I learned the hard way:
Wire in paralell, not serial. Serial made sense in my head when I planned it out for the first time. Parellel is less work, less materials, and much easier.
Do as much as you can outside the rack. For purely cosmetic reasons, I kept my sidewalls solid, and ran the wiring down inside the rack through notches cut in each shelf. Big huge mistake. I spent far too much time bent over reaching to the back of the shelves fumbling blindly to make connections. Never again. Next one I do, I'm going to drill holes in the side walls and run all the wires outside, with connector clips so I can assemble everything at a work station and then put it in place.
Also...those little bitty plastic insulating covers are much bigger than they look; allow for 1/2" of extra shelf length for each one. If they come apart again once snapped together, I've yet to find the trick. When some of my connections turned out dodgy, I wound up hammering at them with pliers (blindly, at the back of the shelf, on my knees at an awkward angle) until they smashed enough that I could pry them apart and get at the connection. They are sturdier than they look as well.
Had I run the wiring externally, I could have just unplugged that section of flexwatt, moved it to a work area, and corrected the problem...as it was, it was a huge PITA to fix, and I still haven't gone back to tinker with the bottom two shelves.
And with the bulkiness of the plastic insulators, I'm wishing I'd soldered the connections instead. I saw a FAQ on it, but was too intimidated by inexperience to feel comfortable trying it. In retrospect, it would have made a much tider and more secure connection.
~Jess
Balls: 2.10 normal, 1.0 pastel, 2.2 het albino, 1.0 50% het pied, 1.2 poss. axanthic, 1.0 pinstripe, 1.0 black pastel,
Misc. snakes: 1.1 blood python, 1.0 Tarahumara Mountain kingsnake, 0.1 RTB
0.0.1 Red-eyed casque-headed skink
1.2 dogs (Lab, Catahoula, Papillon-X), 6.1 cats, 1.0 foster dog
6.4.8 ASFs
1.0 Very Patient Boyfriend
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