Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey guys.... well my water is getting close to 4 ft now and i am starting to build a room size enclosure for him.... the room is 8 by 8 by 9 foot ceilings and i have large logs and branches going to shelves so he can climb if he wants... i am going to put some kind of drainable water feature for him to swim in also but just interested in any one else having any experience with what works what didn't before i get this started..... it's just a square room so i have carte blanche to work with all the outlets are 4.5 feet up on the wall also so i'm going to put a lot of substrate down for him if he wants to dig....
any help or suggestions would be awesome! thanks for taking the time
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17 BP
2 GTP
3 Chameleons
6 Beardies
1 Crested
2 Huskies
1 blue and gold macaw
1 african grey
1 patternless albino Burmese
2 Reticulated pythons (*purple and lav. albino tiger)
1 savannah monitor ("Spike"
6 treefrogs
2 Brazilian Rainbow boas

There are a lot of logistics involved with what you are planning in order for it to work and not damage your house. At the very least I hope your home is built out of concrete blocks and is not stick built. You will need to alter any interior walls as well if they are framed with wood (or worse yet that aluminum stuff.) and covered with drywall. That will not cut it with the weight of the dirt and the amount of moisture you will have.
I am certainly not trying to discourage you and it can be done, but you need to go into this project with your eyes wide open. I have done a lot of large cage work, as have several others on here and FR used to build zoo enclosures so there is lots of help and insight available here with the right amount of info. As expensive as it might be don't rule out a custom built small addition or outbuilding more suitable to your needs. You may be better off in the long run especially if you ever need to sell your house someday.

yeah i figured wasn't going to be easy.... well the reptile room that we have in the house now used to be a "bomb shelter" so it is solid cement blocks.... that we covered with shower board then drywall to handle the humidy and has the garage style easy clean floors......
i would love to do a huge outdoor enclosure but living in minnesota the winters may get a little cold for him...
i have always loved seeing the room size enclosures but definitly think that it would be interesting to sell the house with a mini waterfall room with 2 feet of dirt in there.... haha but i guess we would cross that bridge if we had too..
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17 BP
2 GTP
3 Chameleons
6 Beardies
1 Crested
2 Huskies
1 blue and gold macaw
1 african grey
1 patternless albino Burmese
2 Reticulated pythons (*purple and lav. albino tiger)
1 savannah monitor ("Spike"
6 treefrogs
2 Brazilian Rainbow boas

Blocks and concrete floors are good. A lot of people use pre-formed ponds (as have I in the past.) If you go this route I would absolutely go with the largest one you can get. You can put a shower drain in the bottom and run pvc pipe off of it for drainage. I would suggest trying to install one on one of those $20 dollar ponds first or even one of those $8 bins you mix concrete in before trying it on the full size (expensive) ponds. Workable drains are indispensible with waters and a much better alternative to draining out the pool with a python-type aquarium vacuum. (No pun intended this really sucks.).
You would really be better off doing a pond made from concrete blocks and as crazy as this may sound I would do it at about half the size of your 8x8 room. If you look around for books on ornamental ponds some of them go into detail on how to build ponds from blocks. You can probably look around websites that deal with koi ponds and get tons of info there. Of course if you work with concrete or do pool work that is even better. If you haven't blocks are relatively simple to work with for someone who hasn't done such work. You don't really need for it to be deep you could make it 2 8"x8"x16" blocks deep and to it off with a 4"x8"x16" solid block and it would be plenty deep for you. Once again you will want to think about how to drain it. If you haven't done a concrete pond before I would suggest doing one or 2 (or more) outside first to get the hang of it and make sure you know how to keep it from leaking before trying one inside.

awesome!! thanks for the help... i will let you know how it ends up and will put up some pics.... pretty excited to see him roaming around and swimming.... think it will be great for me to get to watch and him for some space and adequate swim space!
thanks again for everything
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17 BP
2 GTP
3 Chameleons
6 Beardies
1 Crested
2 Huskies
1 blue and gold macaw
1 african grey
1 patternless albino Burmese
2 Reticulated pythons (*purple and lav. albino tiger)
1 savannah monitor ("Spike"
6 treefrogs
2 Brazilian Rainbow boas