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UTH for glass display cases.

D

Darken

New member
Hey people~

I just recently aquired a corner display case (roughly seventy gallons) it is a glass display, I want to convert it to a new viv for Jango & Boba, however the bottom has a 1/4" plywood floor, my question is- how efficent are the UTHs when it comes to heating a wooden floor?- My thought was that I may have to go with a larger size then what is normally needed?! Perhaps maybe drilling a ton of small holes where I plan on placing the UTHs.

I know you guys can help me figure this out.
 
I can't believe it on has a 1/4" floor usually a floor is 3/4" thick.
A 1/4" floor is weak for support of items like a water bowel, hides ans such, I would think it would start to bow down but... I'm not looking at it in person. So I could very well be wrong.
Most UTH are used for glass bottom cages that low heat won't be a problem and they can stick on too. so not being able to understand the floor construction complete I'm leery to give an answer but if you use holes on the floor wouldn't some poop go through them??? So... if you added another 3/4" floor and installed a UTH on top but covered it with Plexiglas that could work. but again I'm shooting from the hip here. Also with a 70 gal, you would still go with the 1/3 floor coverage theory unless you paln to split it in half for your two snakes.
 
I think you are right about the thickness of the floor, I have not actually laid my hands on it yet, I'm going from the description that the person is giving me also I have only seen pictures. I use a mat style substrate so I was thinking that if I put small holes in the floor that it may not be a problem, again I think you are on to something not only poo but - really anything could plug the holes.

Its not possible to make a glass bottom (because of its shape) unless I completely disassembled it (thats a possibility). So lets "assume" that the floor is thicker would the wood be to dense. It sounds like I need to rethink this.

Any more ideas / experiences would be greatly appreciated!
 
Why not drill holes but just not all the way threw.If it is 3/4'' drill holes from the bottom at about at 1/2'' threw.The heat will get penetrate no problem then!!!No more worries about about stuff falling threw the holes.
 
That could work, I'm still chewing on the idea of pulling the top off and somehow placing a false bottom on top of the floor then I could use thinner wood and use support blocks through out underneath between the true floor and the upper floor.

I still would like to hear your ideas, thank everyone.
 
I recomend looking into cutting out a section of the wood floor large enough for a uth then attach a piece of glass/plexglass ontop of it that the uth is mounted to. Does that make sense?
 
That makes complete sense, the problem is that I have very limited space to work in, this a corner glass display case the only opening is in the rear and it is 12" wide x 18" tall then there is a smaller opening under that for storage. It has a brass border around all the connecting glass pieces I might be able to carefully remove the top piece of glass, then I would have room to make all sorts of mods.

Honestly I was hoping that the heaters would penetrate the wooden floor so that I wouldn't have to do much to make it functional. Has anyone tried using an electric heating pad as a heat source? I could hook one up to a rheostat.

The Viv they have now is a 10 gallon tank and I have the recommended UTH size for the tank trying to heat it and with it on 24/7 the warmest it gets is 85 and thats during the day at night it will drop to 70 and this is the warm side of the Viv, the snakes seem to do fine I have no problems with their eating or shedding, my thought is that if they can barely heat through the glass they will never be able to heat through the wood!! Then again it may also be defective.
 
I don't know, The bottom may be where all the structural integrity is contained, perhaps I should wait until I go a get it next week, why stress over something that hasn't happened yet? I may get the display case and actually get hands on it and the possibilities will start falling out of the sky.

I was hoping that I could get a couple of the biggest UTHs I can find put them on the bottom underneath and they would radiate enough heat to keep things nice a warm?!

I thought that someone may have tried this with success. I could just try it out (not with the snakes), put a heat source underneath check the temp every hour or so see if I can get a good conductive heat.

Have you heard of someone using a plain old heating pad? I wonder if it would even get warm enough? On high I don't think they would get more than 100 degrees (I don't know) let alone radiate through any dense material..
 
I think that a cage has to be "water tight" so if you added a 3/4" floating floor with a cut out for an UTH, covered that with Plexiglas that could work.
 
Am I missing something really obvious here? Why not put the UTH INSIDE the vivarium, as this is done with most wooden vivariums. Then it doesn't matter how thick it is... If you are worried about the snake being able to touch the UTH just put a piece of glass the size of the mat over it, and then your mat substrate over that?
 
I've read somewhere that a UTH can be stuck to the bottom of a ceramic tile and then placed in the viv...thats what I plan to do when my corn grows into her wood floored viv display....
 
When I converted an old cage with a wood floor, I put a UTH on the bottom of a ceramic tile.

000_0276.jpg


The UTH is on the right-hand side of the (second) floor.

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