heat mat question

[leviathan]

i have just got a 4ft w - 4ft h - 2ft D
enclosure for my coastal, winter temps in melbs are getting colder.
up higher the enclosure the temps are nice and warm and are no problems but the temps at the bottom are reading a little too low for my liking cold end reached a low af 22. over night and about 26 max, and the hot end reached 25 at the lowest and 29 at the hottest.
judt abit worried its a little cold so was thinking of getting a heat mat
but abit worried as the enclosure sits directly on the carpet and i rent, heard a few bad storys to do with heat mats so just wondering if anyone has a enclosure of this size and if they use a heat mat and how they set i up.
cheers

 

[mysnakesau]

Those temperatures don't sound too bad for a cooling enclosure. You can add extra hide boxes, ones just big enough for your snake to fit into to - the tighter they can coil up the better they retain heat when they aren't out basking. Otherwise, f you get a heat mat, raise it up off the floor with plenty of air flow below it. If you thought a 10W heatmat couldn't do any damage, tomorrow I will get photos of what they have done to two of my enclosures when the mat was on the floor of the tank with a piece of timber, or newspaper sitting on top of it. I couldn't believe I was so close to causing a fire, was just damn lucky the heatmat shorted out before it got that far. I have thrown the very black heatmat away along with a plastic plant that melted and set to it that I couldn't get it apart. But I can show you how it blistered the bottom of my melamine tank, burning almost a complete hole through the floor. I no longer use heatmats. I now have heat panels, made from heatcord entwined around wire mess, timber frame around the sharp edges and covered with shade cloth, mounted on the side walls of my enclosures, and small hide boxes, near the heat, as well as scattered throughout.

 

[leviathan]

yer thats the problem thats why i wanna do everything i can to steer clear from the heat mat idea, i sometimes find her in the cool end and she feels quite cold when i grab her and i think to myself why dont you climb up on your branch or go to the hot end haha but sometimes i dont think they are very smart... ,love em to death but yer lol.i have quite a few rocks on the floor of the tank coz i figured they would retain some heat, i might get some more, she gets into little nooks and crannys amongst the rocks so theres lost of little hidey holes, so many that sometimes i have trouble finding her of late

 

[JAS101]

look any heat source can cause a fire , thats why a thermostat is recomended when using any heat source weather it be a heat mat or a ceramic globe , ect ect.
as long as the snake can get into the warm part of the enclosure then i dont see an issue with the cooler area temps. if a snake feels too cold it will move into a warm area , same if its too hot it will seek a cooler area .

 

[mysnakesau]

look any heat source can cause a fire .....

That is so true. I did the same thing with a heat panel simply because it had no air flow and the heat had no where to go. A friend had made me a heat panel by entwining heat cord around wire, timber frame, covered in shade cloth and aluminium/foil sheet on one side which was to help radiate the heat back into the enclosure when mounted on the wall. However, when my olive python developed a swollen belly days after eating a rat due to her tank being too cold, I laid the heatpanel down on the floor, placed a piece of timber on top of it and carpet, and forgot about it. The heat had no where to go except up through the piece of timber. The shadecloth was completely disintergraded, and the heatcord was melted and set to the wire mess and the aluminium sheeting was crazy cracked.

You are so right, any heating can cause a fire. Thermostats work well but your heat source still needs to be positioned so that it is not smothered and the heat can disperse well. I use minimum wattage heating so that when it does heat up it isn't strong enough to go over my prefered temperature range. But in saying this, I smothered a 25W heatcord and a 10W heatmat which should never need a thermostat, and got burnt twice. I said I'd show you the bottom of my enclosure that had the 10W heatmat. Here it is...

A good friend of mine - Pythoninfinite - came to my rescue and fitted heat panels to the side walls of my enclosures so that I won't have that problem again..

 

[Morfias]

I've had a heat mat burn through aswell luckily it was a tiny one and shorted before it caught fire, it was sitting under the enclosure which sits on a wooden table both got burnt, I still use them but have gone for a better brand and with my new enclosure I'm building for my coastal, i have gone with a 250w ceramic emitter and may look into the cord if it's not enough, he is currently on the floor and I was worried about what would happen if this one caught fire coz it's on carpet so I have a tile on the carpet then the mat then enosure fingers crossed it holds out till I get my glass and put him in the new set up

 

[Bluetongue1]

look any heat source can cause a fire , thats why a thermostat is recomended when using any heat source weather it be a heat mat or a ceramic globe , ect ect.
as long as the snake can get into the warm part of the enclosure then i dont see an issue with the cooler area temps. if a snake feels too cold it will move into a warm area , same if its too hot it will seek a cooler area .

What this statement should say is that any heat source inappropriately used can cause a fire.

In addition, cheap heat mats, including with in-built thermostats, have been known to fail. I would be surprised if these latter items meet Australian safety standards but they still seem to sneak through into our market. My advice there is only purchase one from a reliable dealer.

There are two pieces of advice I would offer anyone using a heat mat. Firstly, it should always have an air gap to allow heat to dissipate and build up in a particular spot. A few mm gap is all that is needed. Secondly, you are better off with a separate thermostat and probe (placed approximately centrally over the mat).

[FONT=&quot]Heat Cord:[/FONT]
Heat cord is considerably more reliable when used appropriately. Wood and any material which raps air in it, such as a moderate thickness of carpet, act as insulators. Most carpet, marine or otherwise, has a lower ignition point than wood so I’d keep it off any heating surface. I would recommend covering heat cord with a ceramic or slate tile and nothing else on top. These are relatively good conductors of heat and will spread heat evenly so that the temperature on the surface is pretty much the same all over.

Never cross the cord over itself and maintain about 5 mm between loops. I recommend a tin layer of MDF board, routed or sawn with a cross pattern of channels just slightly larger than the cord diameter. That allows for movement with heat expansion. You can thread more or less cord under the tile to get the required heat output. Have the entry point at the back or the side of the enclosure so the cord is not accessible to the snake.

Alternative set up as a panel like pythoninfinite has done.

A good friend of mine - Pythoninfinite - came to my rescue and fitted heat panels to the side walls of my enclosures so that I won't have that problem again.

Nice job Jamie has done for you there and a great friend to have!

Blue

 

[mysnakesau]

He sure is Blue Jamie and his wife and dogs are like family to me.

My heat mat wasn't an el-cheapo either. It was a green one from URS. So don't be fooled into believing dearer ones are safer. As Bluetongue1 has suggested, its using them inappropriately that causes the problems. I did with a heatcord and a mat (different times) - won't happen again.