Which heat mat in indoor tropical greenhouse

martinajane12

Appologises olin advance for how much I wrote. I'm hoping you'll please help give advice.

I would like an indoor cabinet greenhouse (IKEA Rudsta short) with high humidity to grow tropical plants. I have been looking at heat mats with thermostats attached, for reptiles and seedlings. I'm looking for a large plain black one as I don't like the ones with writing on. There appears to be reptile flat black mats only sold without writing on them. I will need to place heavy plant pots on the mat.

As I live in the UK, the night time temperatures, especially in winter, can get too low at night not to have the heat mat on 24/7. I'm concerned about safety. I was looking at buying a reptile one on Amazon and some people have said it caused a fire and killed their reptiles! I don't want to wake up to my lounge being on fire! I thought it best not to buy from Amazon but a well known pet shop as they must test products where as Amazon products are sold by everyone without checks. So I looked on a well known pet shop, expecting safety not to be an issue. And whilst they didn't have a heat mat with a thermostat, they had a glass panel that they suggest heat mat can go on, yet the review was that the glass shattered due to the heat and would have killed their reptile had it been near it.

The plant pots also need to sit on the mat and have high humidity which makes me question if that could cause a fire. I haven't the space to not put the heat mat under heavy plant pots, and I don't have any room for it to be anything other than a flat mat. I don't know what shop I can use to feel I can sleep at night, yet I can't not have heat on all night and it needs to stay on 24/7 when I go away too.

To add to this I don't know what to use for power cuts, which sometimes last over a day. It may not be a big deal but will shock tropical plants, especially if it happens over night in winter. As I say, I don't have the space for anything bigger than a flat mat to go into the cabinet. Its been 11 - 14 degrees in my flat during the daytime this winter. Due to the energy crisis I'm not heating my home much, and at night time it gets colder of course. My newly bought calathea, poor thing, is dying due to this, as I haven't got a cabinet yet (I bought it without realising it needs humid warm temperatures at 20 degrees plus and that's how I found out about using the Rudsta IKEA cabinet as a greenhouse for tropical plants). I will however put money into heating the tropical plants in a cabinet.

martinajane12

I've just established that a reptile heat mat isn't going to work because it only heats the immediate area it's sitting on, not the surrounding temperature. Although I don't see how seedling mats are any different!? Surely they only heat the immediate area too.
I also read you are not supposed to put reptile mats in an enclosure and they should be under the glass. 
Some people online say that heat mats are ok as long as thermostats are used but others say this isn't the case as fires can occur because of faults with the mat. Indeed the Amazon reptile mat with the thermostat had more than one review of it catching fire.
I'm no closer to knowing what to do. Please help!

Flugelhorn

I know nothing about this and was intrigued so googled it (heating Rudsta) - all sorts of ideas on Reddit etc - vivarium cords, heat lamps etc etc - however clearly no one ideal solution