Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have just recentley bought a house and am planning to convert part of the garage into a room for a collection of about 10 or so snakes (mainly carpet pythons and similar sized pythons). I am wondering what would be the most economical way of keeping the enclosures at the required temperatures in the winter(here in England). Obviously I will be insulating and carpeting the room but I don't know wether having flurosent tubes and heat mats in the tanks and a radiator in the room would be better than having spotlights and heat mats in all the tanks. Or are there other options. Also I am going to be building my jcp a new tank which I want to be more vertical than horizontal but I've heard that vertical tanks are a lot harder to heat. So I was wondering what kind of dimensions I should be looking at, both in terms of comfort for him and also keeping it as easy as possible to warm to the desired temp. By the way he's about 6ft. Any help on these matters would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou.

I'll answer these in reverse.

For a JCP I really like a 4'x2'x3' cage. Yes it's harder to heat, but it's nice to see such an impressive animal stretched out in the perches of it's cage. In this case definately use a radiant heat panel. Insulate the floor with a foil-covered insulation and keep the thermal mass of the cage high. This will make the cage much easier to heat.

Regarding the garage and ecomical heating, I'd use some sort of radiant heat source for the room. I'm not sure what's available in the UK for radiant heating. Then you can get away with just heat pads for the individual cages.

If you kept a lot of animals like JCP's I might make a different recommendation. The heat panels they benefit from so much are expensive so I'd probably just go ahead and get panels powerful enough to heat the cages without worrying about room heat.

>>I have just recentley bought a house and am planning to convert part of the garage into a room for a collection of about 10 or so snakes (mainly carpet pythons and similar sized pythons). I am wondering what would be the most economical way of keeping the enclosures at the required temperatures in the winter(here in England). Obviously I will be insulating and carpeting the room but I don't know wether having flurosent tubes and heat mats in the tanks and a radiator in the room would be better than having spotlights and heat mats in all the tanks. Or are there other options. Also I am going to be building my jcp a new tank which I want to be more vertical than horizontal but I've heard that vertical tanks are a lot harder to heat. So I was wondering what kind of dimensions I should be looking at, both in terms of comfort for him and also keeping it as easy as possible to warm to the desired temp. By the way he's about 6ft. Any help on these matters would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou.
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Current snakes:

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.3 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

3.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

I would probobly just heat the room to a comfortable temp for you and heat the cages individually...