Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have had to pare down my herp collection due to rishing electricity costs (60% increase last year ), and with winter coming I need to find a more economical way to heat my cages.
I am currently using mostly dome lights with 100watt heat bulbs.
I need something to bring cage temps up to around 85*, with a room temps of between 55*-60* (basement), and heat these cages in a way that wont break the bank.My electric bill is already running nearly $500 every month.
Any suggestions anyone?

How many cages do you have and what is the total wattage of bulbs or other heaters you are using to heat all of the cages?

What type of flooring is in the room?

With an ambient room temperature of 55*-60* you'd probably be best off heating the room and then providing small heat gradients with your bulbs or possibly radiant heat panels if you really want to increase your efficiency.

I heat my 9x17 snake room to 80* with well under 7 amps of power and we do not notice any jump in our electric bill even when it gets to zero degrees outside. My snake room is in the back of our garage and we live in South Dakota so the surrounding ambient temperatures are well below 55*.
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Current snakes:

0.0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java locale (green)

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Malaysian locale (green)

1.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java local (green)

2.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Seleyar locale (all black)

1.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Celebes locale (Black & Tan)

Hi Chris...long time no post here. I have 10 cages running approximately 1200 watts of lights and UTH's.
This is all running on 2-20 amp circuits.
The room is an unfinished, uninsulated room. Approx 45ft X 30ft.
Maybe more in the square footage.
Material is all concrete.
I have one vent running off my hot air furnace, so the heat supplied is dependent on the needs of one zone. Adding another zone is out of the question...with hot air, the furnace would be running non stop. Wish I had hot water heat.
I have wrapped the tanks in reflectix, and plan to use a foam insulation on the walls to preserve some heat.
When our power company announced the 60% rate increase,I just about s**t!
I had moved last year, and went from a heated, and sunlit herp room, to an un heated basement.
Any idea would be appreciated, as if the electric bill continues to rise, I'll have to pare the collection down even more.
Or give up the hobby altogether.
My bill is already $500.00 a month and rising.
Can't afford to keep paying that.

I'm certain you can come up with some way of heating the room with well under 1200 watts of heat and then only using small amounts of supplemental heat for each cage. A lot of this depends on what you're willing to spend to remodel the room.

Would you want a temporary solution or would you rather go ahead and remodel to some degree so you're putting equity into your house? I have done both so I can help either way.

Some basements are not worth putting money into, others are not.

But back to yet another South Dakota example, you may remember the 7x7 room I had in the back of my garage before I bought my current house.

The room has two exterior walls and two walls that were interior the unheated and uninsulated garage. None of the walls had insulation. The ceiling had a very small amount of cellulose insulation, maybe 4". Floor was concrete. Door was a hollow core interior door.

I purchased about $60 worth of Reflectix and lined the walls, door and ceiling with it. Against my better judgment I left the floor as bare concrete.

Here is a picture of that room:

I heated that room with a typical oil-filled radiant heater. One of those with 600, 900 and 1500 watt settings. I hooked it up to a thermostat rated for 1500 watts.

Even on days that were zero degrees outside I was able to heat that room to 82* with the heater on the 600 watt setting. These were days when it was so cold outside that it was below freezing inside the garage. Even with me opening and closing the door constantly the thermostat still cycled on and off instead of running non-stop.

I'm sure you can do something similar, it just depends on how much you're willing to spend and how much you want to continue with the hobby. I can tell you that $500 would go a long way towards insulating the room.
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Current snakes:

0.0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java locale (green)

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Malaysian locale (green)

1.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java local (green)

2.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Seleyar locale (all black)

1.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Celebes locale (Black & Tan)

I meant to say some basements are worth remodeling, others are not.

Also, when I when I said less than 1200 watts to heat the room I said so assuming you will be able to fit all of your cages in less than a 45x30 area.
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Current snakes:

0.0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java locale (green)

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Malaysian locale (green)

1.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java local (green)

2.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Seleyar locale (all black)

1.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Celebes locale (Black & Tan)

what did you eventually do with the concrete floor?

I can close in a tiny part of the basement, and add another vent off the main heat trunk. I'd have to frame it in width wise, and instead of sheetrocking the walls I would just use sheets of foam insulation. Add a 3' door. And Put some insulation on the ceiling.
I'm not so sure I trust running one of those heaters non stop on a thermostat. But I guess I'd be willing to try.
I'm thinking even if I place drapes on rods around my cages, it will go a long way to keeping some heat in, and cold out.
My problem is time. I work tons of hours, so I'm looking for something to carry me through this winter while I pick away slowly at making an instant herp room.

From you other post...

what did you eventually do with the concrete floor?

I moved out, LOL. But I did heat that room with less than 700 watts for the entire winter, including several days of sub-zero temperatures, with the concrete floor left bare.

In my new house I framed out the room and then laid down PT studs flat about 24" on center. I then filled those gaps with 1" foil-faced poly-iso insulation board. Then 3/4" tongue and groove plywood subfloor with vinyl sheet floor over that. The insulation when all the way down to the concrete floor and the air space was between the top of the insulation and the subfloor. Ideally I would have liked to have had an air space on both sides of the insulation but with the studs laid flat this was not possible. To this day that is my biggest regret with my garage conversion. My room is more than tall enough and have 2x4's turned on end would have allowed me to basically build a deck and have the floor level. As it is now it follows the natural slope of the garage floor. It would have been the same amount of material, just more time to get it right.

I insulated the walls with the same stuff wedged in between the studs. In that case I was able to have an air space on both sides. I have not yet added a radiant barrier in the attic over the room but I already can heat the 9x17 space for very little money.

I can close in a tiny part of the basement, and add another vent off the main heat trunk.

I'm not sure I'd even bother with the extra vent unless your furnace is over sized for your home.

I'd have to frame it in width wise, and instead of sheetrocking the walls I would just use sheets of foam insulation.

Check code in your area to make sure it's okay to put the foam insulation directly on the walls. There are concerns with moisture build up. I went ahead and built a 2x4 wall with a gap between it and the concrete walls just to be safe.

If you can get away with foam insulation on the walls I highly recommend a foil-faced product, especially if you plan to use a radiant heater. Just trust me on this.

However, having foam uncovered with sheet rock or another fire-rated coating is against code everywhere in the continental US, as far as I know. So you could just use regular foam insulation and then cover it with Reflectix, which is fire-rated.

I'm thinking even if I place drapes on rods around my cages, it will go a long way to keeping some heat in, and cold out.

In that case I would just put Reflectix on the walls and ceiling in the smallest area you can comfortably contain all of your cages. Wall off that area with a drape of Reflectix that overlaps, sort of like a tent. You can even use weak magnets to hold the overlapped area together.

I would also have an air space underneath the lowest cages. And insulation if you can swing it.

I think you will be very surprised at how effective this is. If it's good enough you'll probably want to come back and do something for the floor.

Lastly, those oil-filled radiator heaters are considered very safe. They are rated much safer than electric baseboard heat, for example.

If gas is cheap in your area you might look into a gas fired radiant heater, like they use in barns and shops. I know little about them.
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Current snakes:

0.0.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java locale (green)

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Malaysian locale (green)

1.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - Java local (green)

2.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Seleyar locale (all black)

1.2 Gonyosoma janseni - Celebes locale (Black & Tan)

>>I'm not so sure I trust running one of those heaters non stop on a thermostat. But I guess I'd be willing to try.

I know next to nothing (really only what I just learned by reading Chris' post) about the other stuff. I can tell you, however, that I ran an oil filled radiator in my basement 24/7 all winter on nothing but the built in thermostat. I had no problems but if I were to do it again I would get a more reliable thermostat than the built in one. I only had one bank of small cages at the time so I just put them on a shelf and put the heater underneath it. It worked really well and did not cost me a fortune in electricity. Hope this helps.

Rob

I have a similar problem, snakes are in an attic with basically no insulation, room can get extremely cold. I built my tankls with little ventilation and lots of insulation.

Most likely you should never need a 100 watt bulb. I get a basking temp of 130f plus with a 45 watt halogen in my tanks. If your using glass aquariums build a wooden, melamine, plastic top and mount the light inside. Your temps will skyrocket and you can cut the wattage easily in half. you can also wrap the outside in shelterfoam panel insulation, dirt cheap and available at home depot.

Keep the ventilation to a minimum. You rarely need as much ventilation as most people provide. A screen top on a glass aquarium will draw heat and humidity out. It's ineffecient and in most cases provides the wrong environment for the reptile.

If you can effeciently heat the whole room by all means do so, this is not an option in my case.

I have an old top i built a few years back i can probably take a pic if you need to see it.

For the most part I use glass cages, though my burms are in Monster Cages with radiant heat panels.
I have insulated the glass tanks with reflectix, and that increased temps by about 10 degrees.
I will be adding foam insulation to the walls, at least in the area of my cages. All I need is a helper for moving the cages around. I will also be switching to radiant heat panels for my larger cages.
I've seen the effects of insulation on the cages, now I need to get the temps higher with less energy.
New cages are out of the question for now. I do however like the idea of halogen lighting, but will the constant bright light screw up the snakes?

Honestly building your own cages and remodelling the room (with insulation etc..) is the best route long term. There are some quick fixes however.

First off make sure you are not using screen lids on glass tanks. They are really horrible. Make a top out of wood, melamine etc. Wood is cheap and easy to work with and will hold up for at least this winter.

Mount the light fixtures inside the tank. On the bottom of the top you are building. I can't stress this enough. Cutting a hole in the wood to put a dome light etc will allow more heat to escape. I built one a few years back when I was a teenager and not handy at all with cheap ceramic fixtures. It worked surprisingly well. A few holes on the opposite end of the tank (cool side) will be enough ventilation. You'll have to toy with this to get it right. Start with 3 small holes, increase as necessary.

Wrapping the tank in reflectix is a good idea. If your really concerned with heat loss wrap all 4 sides. Glass will allow heat to escape quickly.

A standard 45 watt outdoor halogen flood at home depot will give you a basking area well above 100 deg F. I don't know exactly what species your keeping, but everything I've kept required a hot spot and cool side. This will provide that. I read in a previous post you were using around 120 watts per tank. This will cut your usage by about 60% and let you control humidity better.

A constantly running light may disrupt the snake, especially if there are no dark hiding spots. To counter this either provide a thermal mass inside the tank to hold heat in the nighttime. Bricks, stones etc hold heat real well and will stay hot for hours after the lights are off.

You can also use ceramic heat emitters or infrared bulbs. Both should work well. You can also run an UTH or flexwatt as supplimental heat at night. They both use less wattage and will get you through the cold nights. Hook up timers that turn light on during the day off at night and UTH on at night off during the day.

This should get you through the winter and cut your electric bill by alot. Hope this helps a little.

Rich

Depending on the species you keep, you could switch to just using flexwatt. I use flexwatt on everything I keep, and just use low wattage fluorescents for lighting. At only 20 watts for a 1'x1' piece, you can heat a good size area on the cheap. The flexwatt itself is pretty cheap too, at only a few dollars per foot.

The room I use has 2 exterior walls, and it's an old house with a natural gas heater in the center room. The reptile room gets an electric heater on low for the winter to at least keep the room temps in the high 60's. That's only a few hundred watts though, and is only needed for the winter.
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Herp Haven