My new 5-28qt. rack is up and running

[Dbutton]

I got my rack finished today. It had been done except for the heat the thermostat for almost 2 weeks now, but I was waiting for the heat tape and thermostat to get here for a week of that. Darn holidays! Anyhow here is the rundown:

Heigth> 3' 5"
inside width> 18"
Inside depth> 24"
5-28qt. sterilite tubs
3' of 11inch heat tape
1 ZooMed Repti Temp 500R (500watt) thermostat

I made the body of the rack out of 1-3/4" sheet of one side sanded plywood. THe back is 1/4" plywood. The cost of the wood was $36. I bought a gallon of minwax fast dry polyurathane which was $20, but I used less than 1/4 of it to put one heavy coat on the rack. So I have enough for a couple other sealing jobs I have planned like the inside of Daisy's cage.
I already had the screws I needed so I didn't have to buy any of those.
The heat products were around $65. That includes thermostat, heat tape, foil tape, solder, and the appliance cord for the heat tape. It took about 3 hours to build because of some problems with cupping in the plywood. For those of you not familiar with carpentry terms cupping is when the wood bows with the grains which causes it to be a pain to keep the shelves straight. I got it all straightened out though.
The down side to this rack is that it was a pain to build with the grade of plywood I chose to keep costs down. It took longer to finsh since I had to do alot of sanding on the bottoms of the shelves due to the grains raising after the urathane was applied. That was after I had already sanded the shelves before I had even started assembly. And the tubs don't slide quite as good as I would like.
The up side is the weight since 3/4" plywood is a whole lot lighter than the same thickness of melamine. It is real wood and in my opinion will last longer than melamine. And of course the cost.
All and all I would probably been happier but lighter of pocket by useing the melamine.
But don't get me wrong, I love the rack and the baby boas seem to love it too. Oh yea, I went with back heat since my snake room stays in the 78-80 degree range all the time.
So next time you may see a melamine rack or maybe a plastic one if I get rich all of a sudden.
All in all it is working out fine and I am very happy with it. I will use it for the 1 or 2 hold backs I am keeping and a couple of other boas that I am getting. First I have to get rid of these little guys first.

David

[Dbutton]

OOPS, I had to edit some pic sizes and the 2 minute buzzer went off. LOL!

[Dbutton]

And here is one of the new tenants enjoying his new diggs.

[CC]

Lets see some pics.

[CC]

lol....i spoke too soon. Man , I hate this dial up connection. Nice looking setup.

[Stormyva]

Very nice!
When are you going to send some my way

[Dbutton]

Some what? You mean babies? They haven't even had their first meal yet. Give me a few weeks to fatten them up and see what the colors are looking like that they will be up on the classifieds. I have some pastels that are already starting to turn almost completly pink so there will be some beautys to go out. I am oly keeping one or maybe 2 out of the 28 so there will be plenty to go around.


David

[toker]

Nice setup!