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For those who use IKEA PAX for racks

replover

New member
Hi, for people who use the Ikea PAX system of shelves as racks, I am considering doing the same and would like some input.

1) It says the boards and frame are made of particle board coated with melamine foil, which is perfect. However, the back board is made of fiberboard. As I plan to run the flexwatt heat tape with back mounting, against the backboard, I need to check if it is safe to do so. For those of you who do this, did you replace the backboard with something else? Or just mount the flexwatt onto the fiberboard.

2) The shelves are sized to fit flush against the back board. In that case, any heat tape ran vertically on the back wall will touch the boards. The boards are particle board coated with melamine foil, but it seems that they only coated the VISIBLE parts, i.e., the top, botton and front. Whereas the back and sides of the board are not coated. Do you have a way of dealing with this and preventing a fire hazard?

3) I plan to build two racks. One is for larger adults and the second smallest sized PAX is perfect which is 58 cm X 50 cm floor space. There is also a showbox size which I plan to house with the smallest size 35 cm X 50 cm, which fits my tubs well. However, the tubs would be but in SIDEWAYS. That is, the back wall will be against a LONG side of the tub. Now, I'd really like to make a temperature gradient for the snakes, which means that the heat tape should be near on end of the long side, so the other end is cool. Should I place the heat tape say, on the left side of the back board?? So that the heat is against one side of the tub alone the LONG side? It seems weird trying to get a temperature gradient along the SHORT side of the tub...

Thanks.
 
Perhaps a diagram would make it more clear what I mean with question 3...

rack.jpg
 
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