Enclosure heating help/suggestions

[BeZaKa]

I am looking at building a couple of 6 foot enclosures from melamine for my Bredli and BHP (still to get BHP but yes I like to be prepared ) I am looking at setting heating up with a ceramic heat emitter and uv light for basking heat and a heat cord for belly heat. I prefer this kind of set up more as a redundancy in case one heat source fails. My question is the set up of the heat cord. I would like to do something which is easily accessabile and removeable if I need to replace it. I have been through the DIY threads but I cant get my head around the best and safest way to add the heat cord eg. route a heat cord into a melamine sheet and place inside the enclosure and put a ceramic tile on top??? At a bit of a loss as I have never built one before any suggestions/photos or threads I can be directed to would be most appreciated. Cheers.

 

[Bart70]

I saw a pic of a timber frame with heat cord laced under it and I think tile on top that was posted by Skeptic. Might be worth a PM to him.

I recently made a similar thing with a heat mat....mat is sandwiched between a piece of fibrous cement sheet and a 300x300 ceramic tile with a wood frame around it, and the base filled with expanding foam. I can put it wherever I like and plug it into a thermostat (with appropriate probe placement) and away it goes.

Routing into a melamine sheet with a tile on top as you suggested would do the trick as well.

 

[BeZaKa]

Thanks for the idea Bart70 that's the kind of thing im thinking of, just thought id pick peoples brains before I started the build.

 

[baker]

Why have a basking light if you are going to supply heat with a heat cord and tile? Just makes everything more complex and costly to run.
Cheers Cameron

 

[longqi]

one way to get the best of both worlds is to make a cube frame to fit a tile on
sides are solid
bottom is mesh
mount frame part way up one wall
put an ordinary bulb inside
bulb will heat the tile to x degrees creating belly heat
[experiment to find correct wattage. 40watt bulb works well on large terracotta tiles]
bulb also provides basking spot below frame

 

[BeZaKa]

Why have a basking light if you are going to supply heat with a heat cord and tile? Just makes everything more complex and costly to run.
Cheers Cameron

1) As a redundancy. (Im overly paranoid) 2) I have had numerous people, breeders included suggest this type of set up. In saying this I am far from being an experienced builder with this and am very open to suggestions and pros and cons for either way.

 

[baker]

I rather just using the heat cord and tile method because it creates a a perfect basking spot for the snake without overly heating up the rest of the enclosure. That is one thing that always annoyed myself with the lights is that no matter what you raise the air temp of the whole enclosure. Depending where you are it may be a good thing. Like down in Victoria that would be useful but for myself in Queensland always makes it hard in summer to get a basking spot using lights as everything would increase plus the summer temps on top. In saying that this is the method I have found the best so far and I will stick to it until I find a better option. There are several ways to heat snakes you will just have to find the best method for yourself.
Cheers Cameron

 

[BeZaKa]

Thanks Cameron that's why I thought I would ask here to get various ideas and try out some. I currently am doing both and in particular with hatchies only use the heat cord/mat approach. Thanks for the explanation. Cheers. Phil.