Heat Cable Question + Aluminum Tape

I am having trouble finding anything about this with google searches, but I ended up with some used racks locally. They were routed for belly heat already via heat cable, but were used for colubrids with cooler temps. I will be using them for Ball Pythons, so I was playing around with the heat cable placement trying to get the temps up. I found that if I ran the belly heat row and then another row or two across the back that it was plenty warm enough and the cables wouldn't be near to each other either.

I wanted to secure it in place for safety reasons and this is where my question comes in. Since the back isn't routed for cable, I wasn't sure the safest way to do this. The seller just told me to cover it with aluminum tape to hold it in place and that it would also help distribute the heat. Is this safe to do? It would be hooked up to a thermostat once finished, but I just wanted to make sure that covering the cable with aluminum tape wouldn't potentially create a fire hazard or something.

Thanks so much!

Lauren

Covering the cable with aluminum tape should be fine. I cover my flex watt all the time with aluminum tape, I don't see why cable would be any different.

I have my heat cable completely covered with aluminum tape, it actually distributes the heat evenly. Placing the heat cable next to itself isnt going to hurt anything also, "s" turn it a few times next to itself to increase heat and then get it hooked to a Tstat and your good to go. I prefer heat cable over flexwatt...

Thanks so much Jeremy and Rennison! I am going to go ahead and finish the taping job today now to cover the cable against the melamine. I did the S shape run across the back and that is working out great.

The packaging said that the heat tape shouldn't be under the substrate or within 1 1/4" of itself. I didn't know if it being covered by tape would be an issue, so thanks so much for the clarification.

I am really happy with the temps already. They seem very stable across the levels of the rack just like with flexwatt racks I've had in the past.

I appreciate your advice!

Lauren