Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have consolidated my collection of ball pythons and boas in my 4x10 walkin closet(took alot of talking to convice my girlfriend to give that up..heh). Okay now i'm looking to heat the room to aprox 78-80 degrees to save on electric costs. I stumbled upon this site eheat.com, they sell radiant heat panels. If you visit the site do you think those panels would achieve those temps? If not can you offer other heating methods for that space..

many thanks
John

Assuming your closet has 8' ceilings, you'd have about 1.33 watts per cubic foot so that should be more than enough.

For small rooms I have had very good luck with those oil-filled, radiator style space heaters. I had a 7x7 room in my last garage that was not insulated and had two exterior walls. The door to the room was hollow-core and opened to my unheated garage. In South Dakota, no less. I just stapled Reflectix to the walls and ceilings and was able to heat the room to the low/mid 80's with one of those space heaters. I did not even have to turn it to it's highest setting.

So one of those could easily handle your closet.

If you really want to make it efficient you could staple Reflectix to the walls, ceiling and doors. Here is a picture of that snake room I had in my last house. I had not yet covered the ceiling with Reflectix when I took this picture.

You'll be amazed at how little radiant heat will be required to heat your closet.

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Current snakes:

0.0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java locale (green)

2.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Seleyar locale (all black)

thanks for the quick response..

I'm heading out this evening to see if heaters are still available this time of year. I'm in SoCal so they don't carry them year round(actually like 2 months a year). I like the radiant idea because of the wattage and i can use my current thermostats with them. The oil filled appear to use a higher wattage but it might offset the radiant panel by the amount of heat production.

hmm, i hate making decisions.
thanks John

the oil filled heater i have has three settings,600,900 and 1500 watt.the thermostat on the unit itself does not keep the room at a constant temp,so i hook up a 1000watt thermostat and use the 600 or 900 watt setting which works well,the thermostat on the heater serves as backup.have fun!