Congrats on the move. Welcome to good ole Southern Cali.

I live a bit more inland than you do, so my experience may not be totally transferable to your situation.

First off, my snake room is just an extra bedroom in my house. It's an older home, so the insulation likely isn't 100% effective. During the winter, the ambient temp drops to the low 70s. While in the summer, the ambient temp in the room gets to the mid to high 80s.

Secondly, I use belly heat. I have had 1 successful litter using overhead heat in a melamine cage, but the majority of my litters have been produced using vision caging with belly heat. I consider myself still a novice, but have produced healthy litters every year since 2004 in the same house with the same setup.

With the heat pads and the ambient temps that I get during the summer months, I sometimes can turn off the heat pads for the adults and still feed normally. Simply put, it can hot here in these parts.

If your snake room is well insulated, you might be ok using heat pads because the residual heat from all the cages can raise the ambient temp to an acceptable level and so you may not need an additional heater to heat the entire room. This residual heat from the heat pads is likely what raises my ambient temps throughout the year. Again, I've used overhead myself, but I think you might be better off with belly heat.

Just my 2cents. I'm not exactly sure if I was of any help, but please feel free to ask any additional questions.

Good luck and again welcome to SoCal.

Jay

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