Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone,
I was looking through one of the backissues of Reptiles magazine and saw an enclosure someone had built that i would like to try to duplicate. What the person had done was built a cage that their bed rested on top of. It looked kind of like those beds that have drawers underneath them. I was wondering if you guys thought this would be a good idea? I thought it might be a nice way to save space, but didn't know if a cage like that would hold up the weight of a bed and a person (i weigh 120lb). Any thoughts would be great. If you guys think it would work, i would really appreciate any instructions on how to build something like this. Thanks for your time!!!

carole

I have several concerns with this design.

First, having the cage on the floor can be a problem depending on the room it's in. The most obvious problem is if the room is in a basement or is in a single story house on a slab (no basement, crawl space, etc). With either situation having an air space between the bottom of the cage and the floor may be necessary.

Also, for some people having the cage on floor causes access and cleaning problems. If I come home from work late and find a smelly water bowl I'm probably not going to be in the mood to get down on the floor and get the bowl out.

Then there are the concerns with having a bed on top of the cage. Beds have to handle a lot of movement from tossing and turning, etc. This will transfer slight vibrations to the cage which may stress the inhabitants out.

And if the cage requires night-time heating your bed may heat up more than you like.

Lastly, there are the engineering concerns. Not only will you have to design the cage to handle the weight, it also will have to be built flex-free as to allow the door system to operate properly. This will be a concern with almost any door design.

I see the new forum format does not include the original message in the reply box, but I believe you asked for tips etc. on how to build such a cage. Based on that I'm assuming you've never tackled anything like this and am not sure it's a project I'd recommend undertaking.

However, I may have read your post wrong and you may have extensive experience. Either way, I do not feel comfortable attempting to verbalize methods that could be utilized to build such a cage design.

If it were me I'd build an elevated cage and just throw a mattress on the floor underneath it. Or I'd build one of those fold-down beds that could be lowered for sleep.

That would save more room than putting a cage underneath a bed, especially if you require room while handling animals, cage cleaning etc.

Hope I've helped some. I don't necessarily think this is a terrible idea, but I think there are better uses of the material and effort.

Hey chris,

Thanks for the input, you brought up a lot of points I didn't think about. I'm definitly not experienced with cage building, so it sounds like i'll just scrape the idea. I like the elevated cage idea though. Thanks for your help!!

First of all... Credit should be given where credit is due... These pictures are not mine, neither is the design of this cage... I am just posting these pictures so that people can see what you're talking about... The designer's screen name is crm5086, and it houses a Sav. Monitor...
I am somewhat of a woodworking hobbyist, so I don't quite think of this design as being hard to build... However, agreeing with Chris, I would have done a couple of things different...

As you can see in this first picture, this person used a sliding door desing... I have personally never built a cage with sliding doors, however, I was under the impression that these doors had to be measured extremely accurately, don't deal well with flexing, and they were somewhat difficult to install...

What I would have done is built a door with hinges at the bottom, so that you can swing it down... This is for two reasons... The part that will most likely bend or "give" will be the top, because of the weight of the person, so having the hinges at the bottom will not let them be affected by this... Also, the part without the hinges is much more forgiving, as long as you don't intend to have the door fit inside the cage once it is closed...

In this second picture, you can see that this person thought it through a lot... Chris' concern about getting to the water bowl has been thought of...

This also alows for better viewing of your animal, whichever it may be...

The third picture is one that shows something that I don't agree with at all...

Well, it shows the interior of the cage, and it displays a completely bare Ceramic Heat Emmitter, which is dangeround and, in my opinion, should never be done... That animal will burn itself in seconds if it touches the heater...
Also, cutting those bolts would be a really good idea, otherwise, your animals can get hurt with them...
Well, I think I am done... At least for now...
I hope I didn't bore you too much with this message, and that you read through it...
Good luck with whatever you decide to do about YOUR OWN design...
Take care,

~ El__Quijote

Thanks for posting those pics. That's an interesting design.

Like I said, I'd be more inclined to build an elevated cage and sleep underneath it rather than the other way around. But that's just me.

As far as sliding doors go, they are remarkably easy to install.

I'll attach a picture of a cage I built for a Bearded Dragon using birch laminated plywood that had been cut for another project.

The wood sat around for months before I used it and as such I was not able to make my rough opening perfectly square. I could have trimmed it down but I wanted to maximize the length of this cage so I could install full 48" shop lights.

The sliding door system was still easy to install and left the slightest gap in the upper left corner. I've had several friends look at the cage and they have not noticed it until I pointed it out.

If I had used a face treatment other than edge-tape I could have over-lapped over this gap and it would have been completely hidden.

Also, I recently pulled the glass track when I was modifying the cage and then re-installed it. Due to some previous adhesive I could not remove and the thicker Liquid Nails I used this time the track actually sits about 1/32" higher off both the top and lower lips. But the glass still went in well.

So if mine still work given all the above "mistakes" I'd say they are no big deal. Maybe you can swing out to Lincoln and see it up close for yourself sometime.

However, I'm still surprised that they worked with a bed sitting on top of them as per the pictures you posted.