Heat Tape

Well I know how to wire it and use it. Just wiring it properly and taping it down is not going to make it safe for use INSIDE an enclosure. That was my whole point of asking you this, to see what you considered safe use inside an enclosure. Any urine or spills from a water bowl is going to short it out and possibly fry your animal the way you are saying to do it.

 

water and urine spills are of very little to no concern IF all the 4 conductors are sealed properly. from what i've read flexwatt was used early on as an agricultural aid to keep plants roots warm so its pretty much designed to be used in a humid environment. being as the only potential conductors that could short out are 11" apart this greatly reduces the chances of urine ever comming into contact with the leads.

in my current setups, i use 2" of corn cobb bedding that is VERY absorbant it would take about a half gallon of water spilled directly over the heat tape for the water to even reach the bottom of the cage.

we could go back and fourth on this forever so i'll just leave it at this: I feel as my personal educated (in electronics) opinion that it is safe for use inside a reptile enclosure and there is a very very low risk of it shorting out due to normal wear and tear of a reptile enclosure IF WIRED AND MONITORED correctly.

~Will.

 

Just out of curiosity, if they are pretty much the same except that with the tape, you have to wire it yourself, why even bother with the tape? Why not just use a heat pad? Is one better then the other? Do they have their own pros and cons?

 

The problem is that Exo-Terra don't make their head pats 4ft long (or more). Flexwatt is commonly used to heat up the back end of racks, where you could potentially have hundreds of snakes housed. Buying single small heatpads for each tub would get REALLY expensive.

If you're setting up something like colubrid hatchling racks, 3" FlexWatt is much much cheaper to heat your tubs than hundreds of separate pads (and hundreds of power outlets). The tape you can just run right across the back of your rack levels.

 

Ohh ok, gotcha! Thx Axe