Hello,

I have a whole room dedicated to my herps. Each cage is individually climate-controlled with Herpstat2's. The monitor, being uncaged, warms himself under an array of electrical heat emitters up six feet on a long shelf on the wall. My inverts have three or four tanks in the living room, all tropical with herpstat 2's. So I'm using a lot of electricity. A solution occurred to me.
I can run thermostat wire up the hall wall, across the ceiling, and down about 4", and then through the wall into the herp room. As an experiment, the surface-mounted red and white thermostat wires won't be too ugly to live with temporarily. I'll mount a setback thermostat on the herp room wall, so the room will be the only temperature-controlled room in the house. Then I close all the heating vents except for a few; each bathroom, and the herp room. I'll set the thermostat for 85 during the day, and 75 at night.

Since the BT is so used to warming on his shelf, I'll make a false plank under his emitters, with a switch that turns on the electrical heat emitters when he puts his weight on it. I'll need electrical basking-zone heat in one large, colony-type habitat. My furnace will run much less than it would to heat the whole house. Cutting back on the square inches of registers will raise the pressure of the warmed-air pipes, possibly burdening and possibly ruining the furnace motor. But I think three or four open registers will keep the furnace healthy, because the heat demand in the herp room will be only enough to bring the ambient temperature up to 85F. So it will start up, run for five minutes, then turn off, allowing the furnace fan motor time to cool off. I won't know how many times it will cycle per day until I actually make the changes.

Putting the inverts in the herp room will make their heaters obsolete. 85F is just fine for them.

Doing this will dramatically reduce the utility bill for my house. I'll have to dress warmer to live comfortably in my house. That's a Jimmy Carter wet dream. For those of you who don't know, he was President during a huge energy cost upturn. On TV, he told the nation's people to cope by putting sweaters on, and received deserved major outrage and derision. But I'll be doing that voluntarily. In my house, reducing the temperature is easy to get used to. At least the bathrooms will always be cooking.

Does this interest anyone? If it does, I'll post readings of amperage from the furnace motor to prove whether the motor is over-burdened during an average "on" cycle.

Roger

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