New Mac Enclosure (TV Cabinet)

[Dutchy88]

I like ya idea wit the plants gruni I'm gunna pintch that idea haha are u going to stuck them down or jst use the foam as a sort of anchor

 

[Dutchy88]

Looks awersome by the way mate did a good job how much does that light on top bring more colour out of that background

 

[J-A-X]

I was wondering the same thing..... What does it look like with the fluoro off Gruni ?

 

[Gruni]

I'll have a look tomorrow at it with the LED off but I looked at it like that as it's the lightsource for the display so it is what it will be...

As posted earlier Dutchy I need to redo the amount of foam on some of them to give them a broader base and I have some fishing sinkers to add weight to the bases, then the plan is to cover the foam with PVA and roll them in fish tank gravel. I also need to trim the wires/stalks which are sticking through the foam at the moment.

I like the no fuss clean with astroturf Justin and I have enough items in the enclosure to break up the amount of green turf you can see so I think it will still look great.

 

[justin91]

I'll have a look tomorrow at it with the LED off but I looked at it like that as it's the lightsource for the display so it is what it will be...

As posted earlier Dutchy I need to redo the amount of foam on some of them to give them a broader base and I have some fishing sinkers to add weight to the bases, then the plan is to cover the foam with PVA and roll them in fish tank gravel. I also need to trim the wires/stalks which are sticking through the foam at the moment.

I like the no fuss clean with astroturf Justin and I have enough items in the enclosure to break up the amount of green turf you can see so I think it will still look great.

I was wondering how you were going to do the plant bottoms, sounds like there gonna look great.

Ah ok, I'm 50-50 about getting the turf again. It is so easy to clean, hose it outside and its good to go again. I reckon yours will look awesome with turf just because of that one of a kind log you have. I wish I could find something like that, its perfect shape. Might have to go for a walk through the bush in the next few days.

 

[Gruni]

Thanks Justin, I went to a picnic area on the river and it was just a piece of drift wood we found and like you said it just looked perfect for a future enclosure. I had it sitting ontop of the kennel for a good 6 months before I even got the cabinet.

 

[Dutchy88]

Ok so I've been online and got a few bits including a 'rock' hide and two thermostats. One like this which has a day/night feature which will run the heat lamp for day time heating.

And a simple one similar to this to run the basking shelf/heatcord.

I also picked up some MDF to use as a backing for the rock wall, brackets for the shelf and did some dumpster diving for foam at Harvey Norman. I still need to go to one of the sponsor sites and order a 2m heat cord. Then after I have setup the shelf side of things I can start on the rock wall and next payday pick up some render, paint and pondtight. Oh and yesterday I picked up a hide that looks like half a log from the aquarium section of Big W.

So all in all we are making steady progress. Kathy (my wife) and Skye (my daughter) have been looking at DIY sites getting ideas for the rock wall and how to paint it. We are thinking of getting some fake plants, preferably Aussie stuff like gum leaves, as well as some model railway lichen to add to the look of it all.

I am also curious if I put some Spanish moss/Oldman's beard in the enclosure if it will survive and grow?

That first thermostat is wat i was looking at for my enclosure let me know wat its like gruni. Also y did you get two thermostats y didn't you jst use the first one connect ya heat to the thermostat and your heat light to the timer ya jst have to figure out wat wattage light to use so it doesn't over heat

 

[lizardjasper]

For Mitch's sake I revisited the 'fake ceiling', it was the VCR shelf and we put a front on it to close the area where the face of the device would be visible. It has in addition to the front there is still about 10mm to the roof of the cabinet but there is a lip which stops access for the snake to that so there is 95mm from the surface of the shelf to the roof, the shelf is 15mm from memory. I lift it in place at the back and rest it on two shelf supports while I feed the cables where they need to go then lift it up at the front and insert the other two supports and lower it back in place.

Then as it was storming here I took the chance to take some snaps of the wall temporarily back in the enclosure, some with flash and some without. The ones without flash are slightly fuzzy.

Then to see how the greenery would affect things I sat it kind of in place, the only thing not in the last pic is the astro turf.

So, two more coats of pondtite and a rub back to beat the shine a bit and it's more or less one except the fiddling with the plant bases, which I seem to be procrastinating on for some reason.

I use plaster of paris to make the plant bases heavy, and then paint them with non-toxic paint to match the background. Your enclosure is looking awesome!! I hate doing the wiring for the lights. Wish I lived closer to my family, I have an uncle who's an electrician.

 

[Gruni]

I wasn't sure the best way to go so I am running the white thermo with the probe resting on the heat tile to regulate the heat chord 24/7 at 32* but the other one I plan on using the probe as an air temp at the top of the warm side at 30* and as it has a day/night feature to it I will let the lamp come on as often as needed during the day to keep the temps there, in winter I will probably reduce the air temp slightly. Because of the size of the enclosure I don't feel like trying to guess how long to have the ligt on for so for me 'if' I use the light timer it will be for display purposes of an evening although I tend to just turn the display light on when I actually want it, which isn't every night. The thermostats will be a bit of a learning curve for me as I have never had anything to do with them, but there's the theory anyway.

 

[Gruni]

The only work I had to do Jasper was to solder the plug onto the adaptor for the LED light which hardly constitutes 'wiring' to my way of theinking. All the other stuff already had its leads attached and it was just a case of feeding stuff where I wanted it.

 

[Gonemad]

It's looking great Gruni!
where the wood sides meet the background you could put a small, running vine may be ivy or something in between which would make the two combine without a stand out stop start line.

 

[Gruni]

Discovered today that I have a snot load of editing to do, I renamed the folder on Photobucket where the pics are stored and it was enough to compromise all the early pics which I now have to go through and reinsert one at a time so lesson learned if you are hosting your pics don't change ANYTHING or your threads will be next to useless. This thread relies on the pics as a step by step how to do it for total beginners... GRRRRRRR!

 

[J-A-X]

ROFL, you'll only do it once, I've done it ONCE. Now I upload from the PC !

 

[Gruni]

Because I'm not a subscriber at this point I only have so much room for uploads straight to the sight where as I have OOOOODLES of room on photobucket. It's ok, now that I know it works like that I know not to edit the folders etc. At least the picture numbers will still match up so it should be fairly easy to do.

 

[Gruni]

I just discovered that I can no longer edit the early posts and reinsert the images, IF that can't be rectified here is the link to the album with ALL 80+ pictures of the projects progress and most of them were in here: Snake Enclosure Photos by Thorngrim69 | Photobucket

Soooooooooo frustrated at this point as it was meant to be something a noob could look at from the first page and follow the steps for themselves. :cry:

 

[J-A-X]

I've pm'd you Gruni with a suggestion, or alternatively you can start a fresh thread, just a straight how to (part 2) and we can throw a link to it from here ?
I'll keep it clean by moving posts back to this thread. And when your done I can lock it down so its strictly a how to:

Thoughts ?

 

[Gruni]

I pm'd you back with another suggestion...

The option to reinvest it all into a more compact thread may yet be an option.

 

[Gruni]

Thanks to an epic effort by Mum all the pics are back in place and the thread is worth reading again... Phew! Thanks a heap Jax.

 

[J-A-X]

Ok....... all done ! i fixed the mistakes i made Gruni. So hopefully its all as it should be.... I cant wait for this to be finished ! you're going to be my first inductee into our new forum section

"noteworthy threads"

Now where did i park my broomstick !!

 

[Gruni]

I tried steel wooling the finish today... not so successful. The texture of the wall worked like velcro so I gave it a miss. I fitted the background into the cabinet and screwed it inplace from behind. I also fed the thermostat down to the hetile quite easily although I am having some teething problems with my Jet001 themostat which Egernia is helping me sort out tomorrow, on that note though what is the advantage/disadvantage of a switching thermostat compared to a dimming one when running a heat lamp?

The enclosure looks so much different just by adding the astroturf. I have placed the hides in and am happy with that side of things too and the plant bases are getting undercoated tomorrow and then I'll glue the various rocks and gravel on ready for for Skittles to move in next weekend.

The jumble of cables being fed into place.

Thermostat probs in place.

A couple of screws mounted the powerboard and some self adhesive velcro has mounted the rest and some zip ties to tidy up the lot.

With the wall inplace there is less room for the log but the overlap near the ledges will just work in Skittles's favour in the long run I think.