Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A few months ago i e-mailed you about how you heat the your snakes. You said you heat the whole room. You gave me some good ideas to use in my small building. Finally i am almost done with it. A couple more coats of joint compound on the sheet rock and some paint it will be done.I did put the heat in it tonight to get a temp check. It stays at 90 to 91 i may back down a little on it.I also have a fan to circulate the air and a coolmist humidifier.
Just wanted to thank you for the help.Take care.
-----
Thomas Jones
aligatorhunter@earthlink.net

No one is to be trusted

I'm glad it all worked out for you. Yes, it is a lot easier, cheaper and even safer than heating many individual cages with individual heat sources. I say "safer" because of the many things that can go wrong with numerous individual heating and lighting elements and fixtures that can cause not only individual malfunctions leading to deaths, but even fires that can threaten the whole operation. For every additional electrical fixture I see additional possible danger. It's actually mathematical. 100 times the heating elements is in my mind tantamount to 100 times the fire risk. So it seems logical to me to keep things as simple as is possible while providing optimum ambient temps. To me "simple" equals "safe". Many herpers opt to use individual heating elements for each cage so as to provide a thermal gradient to offer to the pythons or boas to choose their own prefered temp. While I would love to offer them this luxury, I don't feel it is worth the extra risk. (yes, I have in the past had some bad experiences with malfunctioned heating elements that resulted in multiple deaths). But I am currently mentally designing a future reptile facility with a caging system designed with internal piping containing a continuous flow of heated water pumped through a centralized water heater set at a specific temp so as to provide a heated "basking spot" of sorts at one end of every cage. This concept utilizes the principal of a single, safe, heat source located away from the main populice, that channels a safe, higher temp to one end of every snake cage, while the ambient air temps of the entire facility are maintained by another single unit heat source (likely central heating with back up thermostats in each room) set at a low 80's setting for most of the year, and proper breeding temps for individual rooms for the breeding seasons. But the idea with the hot water system seems to me to leave little or no room for malfunction. If the water is heated to 100 degrees and is pumped through the water lines continuously then it should eventually make a fairly steady, yet safe hot spot all along the line that can't get too hot. I still have yet to put this idea to paper, but it seems to me to be quite simple and should be fairly easy to design and build. Not to mention, cheap! Plus,. if you know anything about hot water plumbing you'll realize how easy it would be to expand on an existing system by simply teeing off of any given point of the water line. Since no herper or breeder's collection ever gets smaller and only bigger, I really like this aspect. If you want a copy of the plans when i am done with designing them let me know. As always I am more than happy to share my ideas. With this water line design would have to be incorporated into it a new design of caging too, that is marry-able to the pipe line design. This is what is going to take me a little time. Figuring out the right cage design to fit the pipe line idea. For this I don't think that 5/8 plywood is the ideal building material. So I need to further research available building materials a lot more before I seriously begin to design this thing. Who knows,.. I may stumble on something cheaper.

>>A few months ago i e-mailed you about how you heat the your snakes. You said you heat the whole room. You gave me some good ideas to use in my small building. Finally i am almost done with it. A couple more coats of joint compound on the sheet rock and some paint it will be done.I did put the heat in it tonight to get a temp check. It stays at 90 to 91 i may back down a little on it.I also have a fan to circulate the air and a coolmist humidifier.
>>Just wanted to thank you for the help.Take care.
>>-----
>>Thomas Jones
>>aligatorhunter@earthlink.net
>>
>>
>> No one is to be trusted
-----
"If I had 365 enemies it would only take a year out of my life to settle all scores." Mia Miselfani

That seems like a great idea. I saw where the were applying pipes in a floor to be heated by water on Bob Villa's show.If you could find out what material it is you could use it at the top of your cages.It has grooves already routered into the wood in S-shaped patterns. Then you take the pipe and place it in the grooves. Good luck on your design.

>>I'm glad it all worked out for you. Yes, it is a lot easier, cheaper and even safer than heating many individual cages with individual heat sources. I say "safer" because of the many things that can go wrong with numerous individual heating and lighting elements and fixtures that can cause not only individual malfunctions leading to deaths, but even fires that can threaten the whole operation. For every additional electrical fixture I see additional possible danger. It's actually mathematical. 100 times the heating elements is in my mind tantamount to 100 times the fire risk. So it seems logical to me to keep things as simple as is possible while providing optimum ambient temps. To me "simple" equals "safe". Many herpers opt to use individual heating elements for each cage so as to provide a thermal gradient to offer to the pythons or boas to choose their own prefered temp. While I would love to offer them this luxury, I don't feel it is worth the extra risk. (yes, I have in the past had some bad experiences with malfunctioned heating elements that resulted in multiple deaths). But I am currently mentally designing a future reptile facility with a caging system designed with internal piping containing a continuous flow of heated water pumped through a centralized water heater set at a specific temp so as to provide a heated "basking spot" of sorts at one end of every cage. This concept utilizes the principal of a single, safe, heat source located away from the main populice, that channels a safe, higher temp to one end of every snake cage, while the ambient air temps of the entire facility are maintained by another single unit heat source (likely central heating with back up thermostats in each room) set at a low 80's setting for most of the year, and proper breeding temps for individual rooms for the breeding seasons. But the idea with the hot water system seems to me to leave little or no room for malfunction. If the water is heated to 100 degrees and is pumped through the water lines continuously then it should eventually make a fairly steady, yet safe hot spot all along the line that can't get too hot. I still have yet to put this idea to paper, but it seems to me to be quite simple and should be fairly easy to design and build. Not to mention, cheap! Plus,. if you know anything about hot water plumbing you'll realize how easy it would be to expand on an existing system by simply teeing off of any given point of the water line. Since no herper or breeder's collection ever gets smaller and only bigger, I really like this aspect. If you want a copy of the plans when i am done with designing them let me know. As always I am more than happy to share my ideas. With this water line design would have to be incorporated into it a new design of caging too, that is marry-able to the pipe line design. This is what is going to take me a little time. Figuring out the right cage design to fit the pipe line idea. For this I don't think that 5/8 plywood is the ideal building material. So I need to further research available building materials a lot more before I seriously begin to design this thing. Who knows,.. I may stumble on something cheaper.
>>
>>
>>>>A few months ago i e-mailed you about how you heat the your snakes. You said you heat the whole room. You gave me some good ideas to use in my small building. Finally i am almost done with it. A couple more coats of joint compound on the sheet rock and some paint it will be done.I did put the heat in it tonight to get a temp check. It stays at 90 to 91 i may back down a little on it.I also have a fan to circulate the air and a coolmist humidifier.
>>>>Just wanted to thank you for the help.Take care.
>>>>-----
>>>>Thomas Jones
>>>>aligatorhunter@earthlink.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No one is to be trusted
>>-----
>>"If I had 365 enemies it would only take a year out of my life to settle all scores." Mia Miselfani
-----
Thomas Jones
aligatorhunter@earthlink.net

No one is to be trusted