Today I did the first test of the new 6" x 24" heaters from McMaster-Carr. I wired them in series, and connected the two leads directly into the TC200 temperature controller. The setup for testing them was a stack of foam, a sheet of aluminum siding, the heater, and then another piece of foam. Since there is currently no way to get temperature data directly from the TC200 controller yet, for this initial test I just took a temperature reading every 30 seconds as the setup was warming up to the set temperature. 

Starting from 23.7^oC, the setup took 83.5 minutes to first make it to 35^oC. The time constant is the time that it takes for a system to reach 1-(1/e) (about 63.2%) of its final asymptotic value, so the time constant of this data, assuming an ideal (1 - e^(-t)) curve, was calcuated to be 25 minutes. The attached plot shows the raw data, and overplotted is an exponential temperature curve with a time constant of 25 minutes (a relatively good fit for values in the center of the range). 

The section of aluminum siding used in this test is much smaller than the whole enclosure, so if this controller were used to drive these heaters on the sull-size enclosure, the time constant would be very, very long. So for bringing the whole enclosure up to temperature, a bigger power source will be needed.

Attachment 1: The setup for the heaters. My laptop + a textbook were used to weigh the foam down.

Attachment 2: The plot described above.