Reptile & Amphibian Forums

In light of the recent tragic events of the past week, my heart goes out to both groups, is there anything we should be doing to protect ourselves? maybe a checklist from someone here knowledgeable?
I only ask because i have my snakes in the basement and my family upstairs

Good uestion.

I just had my new snake room built and i had to add mutiple outlets. When I went to home depot i just got the cheapest avaliable.

Any experinced firemen here that can give us some tips regarding mutiple heat tape set ups? What about electric outlets? Should we replace with a higher end types... or can any type faulter at any time?
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www.Bluerosy.com

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I'm not a fireman, but I do know you can buy outlets with built in breakers, like for a bathroom. They have a little red button that you push to reset. Also make sure your not overloading your circuits, and all your connections are good. I know that poor connections will heat up as the current struggles to pass thru it. Also keep your rooms as dust free as possible. Have good smoke detectors, and several extinguishers in place. Keep the room as dust free as possible also! I for one will keep my set up with out heat strips, after hearing about all these fires. I don't know if they were caused by that, but if anyone hears any info about the cause or source of any of these fires please pass the info along.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
Jorge Sierra

My Site > www.Sierrasnakes.com

The bathroom outlets with the reset buttons are not breakers. They are GFI's = Ground Fault Interrupter and how they work is if the hot bleeds .06 or more amps to ground they trip.

The bathroom outlets with the reset buttons are not breakers. They are GFI's = Ground Fault Interrupter and how they work is if the hot bleeds .06 or more amps to ground they trip

I have one outlet like that in my snake room. It is a POS. Everytime I use a room heater or plug in the vacumm cleaner it shuts off. I was going to replace it because it is constantly cuasing me problems.
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www.Bluerosy.com

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>>The bathroom outlets with the reset buttons are not breakers. They are GFI's = Ground Fault Interrupter and how they work is if the hot bleeds .06 or more amps to ground they trip.

What about the breakers on power strips?
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
Jorge Sierra

My Site > www.Sierrasnakes.com

Breakers are not designed to protect the load(the flexwatt or heat mat). Breakers are designed to protect the wireing from overload. The only time a breaker or fuse will trip is when there is an overload. When electrical heaters or heat mats(like flexwatt) burn up, most of the time there is not an overload so the breaker does not trip. The only time the breaker will trip is when the hot side wire burns off the electtical connection and touches the neatral wire or ground wire some how to cause a direct short(overload).

Basically, the breaker on the power strip is only going to trip if you have a direct short(overload) if the heat mat(flexwatt) overheats nothing is going to stop the fire.

Side note a fuse and a breaker does the same job. A breaker you can reset a fuse is a one time use item.

Also had sevral heat pads burn and almost catch fire. This is an old pic from 2005. I had sevral of these heat pads and some burned the desks they were sitting on. All of them imploded like this. This one just happened to be on carpet for a few hours.

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www.Bluerosy.com

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Back in the early 90's I had a heat pad (the kind people use) melt down like that. It was under a 10 gallon tank. I wouldn't advise anyone to use those in that way.
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Ross,
That heat pad I had pictured above was for reptiles. They sell those at reptile shows by the thousands on a single weekend. I had 4 of them burn.
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www.Bluerosy.com

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Wow, they must be made for inside the cage use.
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Wow! They must be made for inside the cage use.

Nope! It says right on the lable "for under tank use only"

Honestly i don't know how a company gets away with this. They must be made in China and some small distributors that do reptile shows picked them up.
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www.Bluerosy.com

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I don't know how they get away with it either. They must be faulty if you had 4 of them do that. I hope Ultratherm Heat Pads are better than that. That's what I'm using right now.
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Oh yeah, they are most definetly faulty. I posted the pics of those and a warning on this forum before.

I hope anyone who has them sees my post and pics. I still see them (the blue pads) being sold at reptile shows for over 15 yrs now.
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www.Bluerosy.com

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of the heat pads that i had encountered, most of them came with some little foot pads so to speak to place under the tank to offer some clearance, i think to allow for air flow to prevent heat build up. i think i can understand if a under tank heater would over heat placed on a carpet as the air circulation is greatly reduced. however there should be a kill switch in the damn thing once it reaches a certain temperature.

this is the thing that was ALWAYS in the back of my mind when i kept snakes. i never put much trust in any heat source. the best part of brumation is the reduced risk of accidents...
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odelay odelay odelay hee hoooo...
heeeeya huhhhh!
~Back in the saddle (Aerosmith)

Thanks for warning us about these blue things!

I only use Zoomed UTHs which so far after four years of service have yet to fail. They do come with little tiny shim pads to lift the tanks up but I never use those, I use bigger better shims instead. All my heaters are controlled with thermostats as well.

All electrical appliances and devices should be UL certified.

China has a very bad habit of making counterfeit UL items.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

I've also used the Zoo Med UTH's and the Cobra heat pads by T-Rex with no problems over the years. The Cobra heat pads don't stick to the bottom of the cage. You just attach them with foil tape. I like that they don't stick so you can move them to be used on other enclosures. I've got a couple that are close to 10 years old and look like they did when they were new(although it might be about time to retire them just to be safe since they are fairly old). I've seen a lot of cheaper looking heat pads at shows and pet shops but stay away from them.

I think one good safty habit is too use the best products you can and not go the cheap route. Also doing things like using foil tape under heat tape instead of putting the heat tape directly onto wood, melamine or plastic.

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Randy Whittington

Ross and Rainer, I wondered if you had the heat pads turned down some with a reostat or some type of thermostat or were they on full heat(just plugged in). All the types of heat worries me a little although I never keep snakes without it. I use heat tape or heat cable on most of my racks but use heat mats on a handful of setups. I've always used the Zoo Med under the tank or T-Rex Cobra heat mats when I had to as they seem to be made better than others. I've never had a problem with those two over the years. I used a cheaper one once and noticed in a short period of time the cover started seperating with the constant heat. I have stayed away from the cheaper looking ones ever since.

Don't get me wrong. I guess I'm trying to keep myself from worrying too much about it.
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Randy Whittington

I can't remember how hot I had it, it must have been pretty hot. That was back when I first started and luckily didn't have to learn my lesson the hard way. It was melted to the point where the wires were exposed.
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put a fuse between your heat and your stat... i have had 1 blown fuse, not sure what would have happened without it, but when the fuse went out all id did was let the snakes cool for a few hours untill i found it
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Chris - TX

>>put a fuse between your heat and your stat... i have had 1 blown fuse, not sure what would have happened without it, but when the fuse went out all id did was let the snakes cool for a few hours untill i found it
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>>Chris - TX

This sounds like a good ideah. More instructions or pics for us electical dummies would be helpful, thanks.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
Jorge Sierra

My Site > www.Sierrasnakes.com

Chris - are you sure you did not have a power surge to cause the fuse to blow. Did you have a burned up heat mat?

no burned up heat mat... im not sure what happened except the fuse had blown.. i use flexwat and have never had a problem other than the 1 fuse. Also, i only use it as back heat a couple inches away from the tubs...
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Chris - TX

Everyone has said some important things, such as don't over load circuits and have smoke detectors with fresh batteries, etc. I would like to add, make sure no wires or cords are being pinched or crimped by things like heavy tanks setting on them, and if using extension cords make sure the cord is heavy enough gauge and not frayed or pinched. Have plenty of air space under UTH heaters. I know everyone is hep to how important thermostats are. Check daily with an infrared gun to make sure a heater is not over heating. Fires have been started by cats and dogs urinating on outlets, so protect the outlets from animal spray.

If I think of more I will add it later. All these horrific fires of late is just terrible. If you feel uncertain of your expertise concerning your electrical safety, hire an electrician to check your set up.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Also it is important for people to know that it is FAR better to not use long extension cords whenever possible, and especially thinner gauge cords. More length equals more needless power draw, especially with things that take more juice to run such as space heaters, garage freezers, etc...

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

very true. if you have to use an extension cord, use a 'commercial grade' make sure its 12g or at the very least 14g if the cord is long
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Chris - TX

And use a GFCI at the source..........I can't believe no one mentioned that yet.........it's as good as a fuse and you don't have to replace it..........
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...

Hi,

The two major things that I would suggest are:

1.Don't ever sandwich heating pads/mats/tapes between surfaces without allowing air exchange. I buy those 3/4" rubber feet from HD and screw or glue them to the bottoms of all of my cages. This practice doesn't allow heat to build up between combustable or meltable surfaces.

2. Don't overload plugs. We are all guilty of adding loads to our plugs with extension cords as our collections grow, but it is a very dangerous practice. When I built my snake shack, I used heavy duty 20 amp plugs and used four outlets per box. That way, I never have to scab extension cords together and the plugs never get overloaded (hot) even with relatively big room heating devices such as oil radiators. If you can't add outlets, I would at least replace the receptacles with heavy duty ones, or better yet ground fault interuptors (GFIs) that will kill the power in the event of an overload. Replacing outlets is easy to do - black wire (or red if the house is older)to gold screw(hot), white wire to silver screw (neutral) and green wire to green screw (ground). Just remember to turn off the breaker first or you'll get zapped. Good luck.

Will