Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am moving into my first home and I have a room in the basement 15"long and 5"deep that will be for my BT. The basement is unfinished and the floor is concrete. Should I use something on top of the concrete floor before adding the substrate to insulate from the cold of the basement floor? I was thinking maybe slabs of plywood. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Sean

Do you want the truth? Cheers

Yes please.

Plywood will not help. Insulation will not help either, within reason. Understand that insulation only slows the radiation of heat or cold. It does not stop it. So being in a basement, the earth wins.

If I were to attempt that and with my experience, I would heat the floor. I think I would run pipes, mostly copper and circulate hot water thru them.

The sell these inline hot water recirculating pumps. They are so fancy dancy folks can have instant hot water. You can get a small water heater and work from there.

I would then build the cage over that. This way, you can control the mass temp of the substrate. In my opinion, you only have to create a medium temp, say mid seventies to low eighies.

Again in my opinion, mass temps are far more important then air temps. Monitors/most reptiles, understand mass or surface temps, and could careless about air temps. Cheers

Thanks Frank,,,, I will start looking for everything I need to heat the floor. That sounds like the best solution.

Frank, it is very funny that you would suggest this method to heat the floor. This is the exact method that is used here in Korea, for almost all of the houses. It works great for several reasons. I personnaly like it because it heats the air without stealing the humidity. I built both my house and my reptile building and used this method exclusively. Because of the high cost of heating oil and electricity, I also added charcoal furnaces which i use almost exclusively. The cost is low but the only drawback is that i have to constantly "refuel" the furnace 24/7.

After we poured the foundation for the building(s) we laid 10" styrofoam insulation and on top of it a wire fencing and then wired flexible PVC (it is made here just for this purpose and is about 1" in diameter) to it. it comes in from the furnace room and is spaced about 12" apart. We then poured a second layer of concrete over the insulation/pvc.

the boilers have coils wrapped around them which are connected to the pvc hose to make a complete circuit which is filled with water and circulated by a small pump. The water is heated as it passes around the furnace coils and then moved through the flooring to provide a constant and easily controllable temp. If i fire up all 6 furnaces I can heat the building well over 100 F. Of course i do not need to and keep it at a constant 82 F.

Great suggestion if it can be modified using components available there in the U.S.

Also heat strips(flexwatt) can be used for this. Flexwatt was originally designed as a floor heating system in the UK. The problem with this is, you must have air space below the flexwatt or it can overheat and cause major problems. For a small cage(not a whole building) it would be very easy to build a cage of floor joists, (standard floor construction) and use 15" flexwatt.

But I would not recomend that for someone without knowledge of the subject as if done wrong can be dangerous. At least hot water systems only cause floods, hahahahahahhahahaha. Cheers

Finish the basement, add extra heat ducts, the floor was raised a bit, tiles, and insulate the windows better. Then the cages go up on cinderblocks to give an air space between the floor and cage (the temps conduct from floor to cage), thern build a big cage (plywood, FRP, silicone the corners, solid top, deep dirt, a few vents around the sides (very small vents).
All of this makes a difference, the temps are more consistant all year.
You could do like a few others and add heat to the floor to keep temps at a certain level in it.

Thanks for the info. I will try to add some heat to the floor and also elevate the floor to create a heat space between.