In a sealed environment, even with ventilation, I am sure the Flex will provide all the heat you need. When I have worked with it, I have been very pleased. I will be building another rack this summer and will use Flex. I have a variation on the theme I am thinking about - but that is for another thread.

I dont blame ya, I myself am working on reclaiming my kitchen counters lol.... I barely have room to cook! Aluminum tape should work just fine, I used wide electrical tape, the expencive stuff is pretty water resistant... You woudnt want fluids on top of it either, I made that mistake, and one day while grocery shopping, I had some really gross stuff cooked to the top, when I came back and had to throw it away... My best advice, line the inside of the cage with spash board and sandwich the flexi in between it and the inside of the cage, and caulk it so no fluids can get through... The spash board is pretty thin, so it heats though the board well, If your using silicon, make sure you get something that is heat resistant, but its hard to find heat resistant and non toxic (I couldnt find anything that met that critera) My boyfriend used silicon that wasnt heat resistant, and within a few months the silicon got pretty brittle, and didnt seal anymore...

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"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanual Kant

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

My hat is off to you who use Flex on the inside of the cage! I am interested to see how it turns out, Merlin.

I have flex inside my "big girl" cages. I used a staple gun on the outside edges and stapled it to the floor. Then I got a thick piece of plexieglass and put a HUGE THICK bead of silicone all the way around it and set the plexie over the flexwatt.

When we make our new cages like this- I will be using a 1x2 between the plexie and the flexwatt-

I just had a flexwatt strip burn a giant hole in one of my tubs on my rack- total bummer- burned one snake and got a near by tub member very... high...

i'm afraid that having the plexie directly on the flexwatt will not allow enough air circulation so we will be changing our design soon....

Good luck!!

Beth

To help prevent something like that, Everyone here has there own thermometer with an alarm in case temps get to high...(dont remember the brand but they are 13 bucks at walmart they are an indoor out door digital thermometer, with probe temp, humidity, and ambiant temp), also, because we had a house fire when I was young, and we lost everything, I always put a smoke dector, right above my cage stacks.... and...

Okreptile, I hope your snakes are going to be ok... Scary!

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"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanual Kant

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

IF you put it inside like how OK said with it covered with something, it will get super hot and will burn. I almost cooked my bps that way. was a good 150 170 on the flex watt and made the glass that I was using crack about 3 ways. So ya Underneath is where I put mine. Also if the silicone gets a pinhole in it, it will leak out and run down the cage to the floor ewww. It did on mine, sucked bad.

I have 4x16x16 4 high with stuff on top too, all half inch and it was fine. Made a dolly with wheels and 1x2s as spacers. Worked fine for me. and I had 1/4in, framed glass doors. so there was some weight to them.

Another idea I had was to take a piece of glass, that was 12x2ft 4 in, and routing out a place in the cage floor and putting the glass in the hole, so it would be on the glass and still get air. Like cut a hole, then router it so the glass will lay flush with the cage, and then seal the glass in place.

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Well I seem to have run into a snag.
Got the cage built and the flexwatt installed inside. 2ft of the 11 inch wide stuff. Controlled by a thermostat set at 110 degrees(the snake is not in there!)
It has been running for 24 hours and the air temp in the cage is only 68 degrees. Apparently the cage is just too big to be heated by the flexwatt alone. Are those of you using flexwatt to heat keeping your enclosures in an above normal room temp? Or am I missing something.
Its starting to look like I am going to have to rethink my heating!

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Hmmm. I've never used it before but I would think 2 ft of the 11" would make it warmer than that. I would recheck your wiring.

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Mike
"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you." - Mother Teresa

Without the thermostat the flex had reached 125 before I shut it down.
But it still didn't seem to heat the rest of the cage much.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Give it more time. It's not just the air that is getting heated, but all the materials inside your enclosure. When I finished my enclosure, it took a few days before the temps finally started to rise because that's how long it took to get the wood, water, and dirt inside to all rise in temp as well. As long as there is little or no place for the rising hot air to escape, it should be able to heat it up.