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DIY guard/cage for hanging dome light - advise needed
Hello everyone. New member here. I'm working on converting an enclosure that formerly housed a Chinese Water Dragon, getting it ready for my new yearling Jungle Carpet Python (so excited!!). This will be the first time I've tried housing a snake in a wood enclosure. It's 4' wide, 2' deep and 6' tall, though I'm blocking off the lower half until he gets bigger. The cage has two dome fixtures that are suspended from the ceiling of the enclosure; one has a heat bulb and the other is currently empty. When my bank account recovers from the purchase of this not-cheap snake, I'd like to try out radiant heat panels, but for now I'll need to use this bulb fixture to keep up my ambient temps.
So, my question is: how do I protect my snake from getting burned? If we had mounted a fixture to the ceiling I could use one of those cylindrical or rectangular cages, but my husband drew the line at electrical work when he built this for me. I've found online that Zoo Med used to make a bulb protecting screen for dome fixtures years ago, but they were discontinued. So I'm trying to make something similar out of hardware cloth. But how does the snake not get burned on the wire guard? Does it need to be a certain distance from the bulb? Does the wire have to be pvc coated to work? Any advise would be most welcome.
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