Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So following in line with Adam Jeffery's earlier post in regards to a Herp shed and Snake Hunter's post on Reptile House essential's, I really got my wheels turning.

Now I totally agree Ryan's post in regards to having the facility not in-conjunction with your home, the likely hood of a lapse in husbandry is increased. I also concur with the back up power generator.

Ultimately I'd prefer a high efficient structure, as a contractor I'm trying to lock down a contract with a building system company to be listed as a builder with their product. Their product being SIP (Structural Insulated Panel).

Keeping those in mind as potential drawbacks from a Reptile dedicated house I tried to compare them with the benefits.

First off as most keepers my wife is understanding but not compassionate. Moving the collection to a dedicated building does all the following;

-opens up a room for use by the wife, if not totally at a minimum additional space.

-when we do list the home for sale we won't have to worry about the negative viewpoint towards reptiles (building is movable)

-is far easier to heat/cool a single facility on a single HVAC unit vs constant adjustment of the main home

The building shown below is 10'x25'x11'H, when placed on a low pro 30' goose-neck, she will be under all the requirements at the point in which a permit is required.

In addition because of the SIP construction it is stronger, lighter, and allows for more interior space than the traditional stick built structure. Weight when complete is roughly 8K vs 21K with traditional methods.

The cost is relative, if I build the SIP's myself the cost goes down about 50% over the stick built home, however if I have them engineered the cost will most likely be higher than the stick built. Right now I estimate the viewed structure at $2500 using DIY SIP's.

Lastly an earlier post mentioned the effects of entering the building during cold weather and the dramatic effect of that on the inside temperature. If you notice in the picture their is a wall 6' inside the main door. The intent is the back portion of the building be dedicated to reptiles, the front will be a rodent room. This will improve but not eliminate the effect. As a comparison I heat my garage 19'x20' to 60°F in the winter, even at -30°F the temperature in the garage doesn't fluctuate more than 1°.

I post this as food for thought, I may start in the spring I might not. We will only see. It will take 2-3 days to build the panels and another 2-3 to assemble them. Almost the same time as traditionally built structures of equal size, however in this case the structure is ready for vapor barrier and already sheeted in the interior.

Cheers

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Jeremy Payne
JB Reptile

1.0 Snow "Kahl"
0.2 Triple Het Moonglow "Kahl"
0.1 Orange Tail Hypo Het Leopard
1.0 Ghost
0.1 DH Ghost
1.1 "Kahl" Albino
1.0.2 Hypomelenistic
1.3 Pastel Hypo
0.1 Anerthrystic
0.0.2 Normal

0.0.2 Morelia Viridis
1.0 Morelia Clastolepis

i never even thought about using sip's!!!! that is a wonderful idea. i have yet to call code to see what i am and am not allowed to do. but i want to go bigger. i need a rodent room to hold at least 4 rat racks. also a small room or area to house electrical panel, generator and hvac system. most of which if planned correctly wont take up much space.
hope you get yours done.
do you have a link about making your own sips? or is it as simple as styrofoam glued to osb?
thanks again
adam jeffery
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" a.k.a. farfrumugen "
When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car.

The big boys don't want the DIYers nailing their trade so they kept their lips tight about the actual adhesive and procedure to make SIP's.

Through the research I've done it can be done with 3M fastbond (WB) and a vacuum press.

I myself drew up plans for a simple clamp press.

So while it maybe easy to assemble and even build SIP's there is some additional cost involved.

Hotwire tools are spendy and the ones needed are a little challenge to DIY.

I suppose if you don't leave runners for wiring it's far easier.

In my listed design there are only 6 different SIP's and a significant portion are either 4x8 or 4x9.

Cheers
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Jeremy Payne
JB Reptile

1.0 Snow "Kahl"
0.2 Triple Het Moonglow "Kahl"
0.1 Orange Tail Hypo Het Leopard
1.0 Ghost
0.1 DH Ghost
1.1 "Kahl" Albino
1.0.2 Hypomelenistic
1.3 Pastel Hypo
0.1 Anerthrystic
0.0.2 Normal

0.0.2 Morelia Viridis
1.0 Morelia Clastolepis

Just an update, I'm still trying to track down a local source for 3M fastbond, seems to be the most suited product for this situation.

One thing to note; the cost to frame, sheet, and insulate both structures; either via stick built or SIP built is nearly identical in costs. The SIP built using DIY SIP's are definitely the longer route. However their is no question at being lighter than stick built.

After review of my calculations it appears I had some decimal point errors. Re factoring weight and cost of the buildings yields the following;

SIP $1870.63 at a weight of 6019lbs
Stick built $2016.97 at a weight of 8570lbs

So while not as dramatic as I once though it is still over a ton lighter.

Although not exact as I'm using figures used in a school project from the turn of the century.

I'm not sure this will come to fruition, but the concept is interesting.

I'm still considering HVAC and plumbing issues with a remote facility. As the design is semi-permanent, this limits plumbing and electrical connections. Meaning the facility will not be connected to a water supply. And the electrical supply will have limited amp capability.
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Jeremy Payne
JB Reptile

1.0 Snow "Kahl"
0.2 Triple Het Moonglow "Kahl"
0.1 Orange Tail Hypo Het Leopard
1.0 Ghost
0.1 DH Ghost
1.1 "Kahl" Albino
1.0.2 Hypomelenistic
1.3 Pastel Hypo
0.1 Anerthrystic
0.0.2 Normal

0.0.2 Morelia Viridis
1.0 Morelia Clastolepis

My wife and I have considered both moveable herp houses as well as SIP built herp houses. For reasons that will be described more below, we never considered combining the two.

We considered a moveable herp house, specifically a trailer or RV based system for three main reasons. In order of least to most important:

1) A lot of forest fires in my area and we live on a heavily wooded lot. Having the ability to simply hook up a trailer full of valuable reptiles to a vehicle and drive away in case of emergency appealed to us.

2) Not having to hide the collection in case of visitors, potential buyers in case of listing the home, etc.

3) In many neighborhoods in my area you can often store a huge RV or trailer but you can't build a shed or outbuilding as large.

The SIP built herp house was more of a means of putting some equity into our property. Sort of a cabin in the woods retreat for me to do some paperwork and get away from the house. My reptiles would have been in there but it would have been multi-purpose in fuction.

I did look into DIY SIPs but don't remember much. I think at the time a vacuum bag was considered a must and a pretty potent one at that. I was only considering lamintating OSB to extruded polystyrene, not injecting self expanding foam into an OSB structure, which is how some people have done it.

I've already lost this reply once so I'll post what I have for now and see if I can write some more later.

Good to see you back on the forums.

I knew you had considered the cabin, but I had no idea you had considered an RV as a solution.

That being said I have no idea how that would work on your property...

Regardless you made very valid points.

I did consider an remodeled RV to suit my needs or the needs of other as previously mentioned further down the page. In my situation an RV is just not the practical solution.

One reason in part is that we already have a 36' RV on the property combine that with two very large trucks a small 1 ton trailer flat deck utility trailer, and that I'm trying to finance a 20' contracting trailer. There is just simply two much on the property already. Although to move the project previously mentioned I'd have to get a 30' goose-neck (want one anyways)

The second issue beyond the parking lot we already have is that modifying and insulating an older RV will be quite the chore. Most RV's are not the best insulated units as they aren't meant to be used year round. Compile that with other issues found in older rv's particularly stick and tin models, it would just be easier to build a facility.

The fact that my current home and all other future homes have no home owners association, only laws of the city itself. None of which limit the building of an outbuilding just the placement and inspection of during construction. Their are homeowner associations up here but as a potential buyer we typically don' look at homes with them. I have some interesting situations that fall outside of the rules of use for most homes...

I do agree the evacuation of the entire collection would be nice, however the safety of the occupants and the tying of the cages to the unit may almost be self defeating. Would be a harsh lesson if all was for not...

You are correct most of the threads on DIY SIP's recommend a vacuum press. However they also specify 6 psi is suitable for clamping. For a product that only needs clamping power applied evenly to two sides, I just don't see the benefit to building a vacuum press. And adding the use of one to the build just seams like much needed additional work. Particularly because of the products being used in the SIP construction, EPS and OSB are by themselves fairly rigid combined with a thin layer of contact cement. Assemble is equal to that of a PB&J sandwich by use of a sandwich press.

Injection molding is far more complex, and requires a significant amount of equipment.

I agree they need to lengthen the automatic time out function on KS, for long posts I copy and paste to word before posting just in case KS decided it took to long to write...LOL
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Jeremy Payne
JB Reptile

1.0 Snow "Kahl"
0.2 Triple Het Moonglow "Kahl"
0.1 Orange Tail Hypo Het Leopard
1.0 Ghost
0.1 DH Ghost
1.1 "Kahl" Albino
1.0.2 Hypomelenistic
1.3 Pastel Hypo
0.1 Anerthrystic
0.0.2 Normal

0.0.2 Morelia Viridis
1.0 Morelia Clastolepis

Yeah I just wanted to throw out some general information for those looking in since this topic has been in a couple of other threads recently. Of the issues I addressed, the biggest one for people to look into is code and covenants for sheds/outbuildings vs. just storing a really big RV or trailer.

When I was considering RV vs. trailer my math suggested a really tall trailer would be cheaper and easier to frame out and insulate (to what I considered necessary) than converting an RV.

To address an issue brought up in another thread, I should first let everyone else know I have a 9' x 17' area of my third garage stall walled off for my herps. I decided on this over a trailer and only considered the "cabin outbuilding" later on.

I do want to add that even though I don't have to walk outside to get to my herp room, I really don't like having it outside of the main house at all. Someone questioned in one of the other threads if it would be in the best interest of the animals or the keeper's enjoyment to have the animals away from the main house.

I think the animals can be fine either way and probably even benefit to some degree to just be left alone. But from a personal enjoyment standpoint it's really not for me. And neither would a trailer stored outside or a cabin that I'd have to walk to.

But with that said, I understand all too well that situations with ones family, species kept or even numbers kept can make an outbuilding necessary.

I guess with hindsight I think it would be nice to have an outbuilding with a window and instead of long and narrow maybe a more square shaped room. I think that more cages could be visible from a main focal point that way. With the greater degree of separation it would be nice to have a place to sit and just hang out.

Stuff to keep in mind as people approach their outbuilding projects.

As far as outbuilding vs part of the house, mine are in a 10 x 20 room in my detached garage, and they get all the attention they need. I check on them every morning and then in the evening, and ofgten during the day. But, being out there, they have a lot more solitude than they would in the house. It works geat for me, and the snakes too.
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Greg Jackson