I used a thin piece of vinyl to cover the heat pad... Check out my gallery and youll see some pics of the custom enclosures my father and I built. If you have any questions on it shoot me a PM. The vinyl was like 20$ for a massive roll at lowes and I have plenty left over... I plan on building 3 more cages this summer as I have some 07 females that will need a larger home. I built 4 cages for 400$ total... if you plan on buying plastic ones plan on paying like 300$ for 1... much cheaper to build em yourself... Also the cages we built are extremely easy to clean.