Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone here heat their entire snake room as opposed to providing a hot spot on each enclosure?

My current set up is racks with hot spots of about 90 in a room that never goes below 77. In the summer, however, the room can get as high 85 during the day and down to 78-82 overnight. Given those temps, I was thinking about turning off the supplemental heat and just using room heat and seeing how that went.

Any thoughts? Pros, cons, experiences, etc.?

Thanks for your help.

Rob

At those temps, I would turn off the supplemental heat as well. I am housing my collection inside the house which I keep pretty cool during the summer months. So, I have back heat on my racks. They are set on thermostats, so if the room gets too warm, the heat shuts off. This is VERY critical if your room gets above 80 degrees IMO!! In the past, I housed my collection in my carport storage shed I converted to the herp room. I kept the entire shed at a constant 80 degrees with heat during spring, and AC during summer. Once again, any heat or cooling units were on thermostats. The outside shed would get to well over 90 degrees in summer without the AC!! It sounds like you can keep your supplemental heat sources on thermostats and they will turn off as the temps in the room start to rise with summer approaching. Once you know the temps are staying in the mid to upper 70s at night, turn off the heat. They should be fine at those temps as long as we are talking about corns or other North American colubrids.

I've kept my snakes in a warm room for years and I have never had a problem. I take that back. There was a time when I was living with my in-laws and I kept my snakes in a closet. I only had about a dozen snakes then. I had to use a small room heater with a built in fan to keep the closet warm, cause my wife loves the bedroom ice cold! Well one day while we were both at work my mother in-law goes in the room for something and she turned off the AC (window unit). Well when I got home that closet had heated up into the 90's and I lost half my collection. I don't use heaters to heat up the room since then. What I do now is I have all my snakes in a utillity bathroom and since temps here in Florida are warm most of the year I just close off the AC vent for that room. If it starts to get too hot like in August I'll open it accordingly. Room heaters scare me
Although I have seen it done safely with a good Helix thermostat. But even the best equiptment can fail.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

...for your input. I think I will give it a try and see how it goes.

Rob