Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello.. I have a new snake room I built about a month ago in the basement. It measures about 11' x 11'. The outside walls are insulated but the floor is still concrete. It holds 5 of the 96" freedom breeders. Right now I have an oil-filled heater in the room which keeps the upper half of the room at about 80-83 degrees and the bottom of the room anywhere from 67 to 72 degrees. The heater is on hi and turned all the way up on the other dial. The ceiling is not finished. I have 5 reticulated pythons so i need the ambient temp on the bottom cages to be at least 75 degrees. Does anybody have any ideas how to maintain the proper ambient temp in the room. I am sure Chris "The Guru" Harper can help me...please. I have the temp controllers set to 99 for there hot spots that is with the probes touching the plastic above the 11" heat strips. But on top of the news paper it is about 95. I have large tupperware filled with moss for them to hide in on half of the heat source. There is a hole cut on one side of the lid and I spray the moss everyday. Their little humidity box. They love them. The only problem is they spend all of there time in there because of the low ambient temp on the other side of their cages. Two of them have started a slight weezing so I am taking them to the vet tomorrow. I just recieved them a week ago and two of them had weezing when I got them. Those are the two I put on the top cages. They are better now. The top cages on both sides of the room are ok. But the bottom two on one side and the bottom one on the other are too low. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will post pics of the room tomorrow night.

Thanks,

Don
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1.0 Super Tiger 100% Het Albino "Lucky ME"
1.0 Lavender Phase Albino
0.1 White Phase Albino
0.2 "Big Honkin" Het Albino Normals

1.1 Stupid ankle biting Chihuahuas "snake food"
Don't look at me they are my fiances.

0.1 Beautiful 5 year old daughter.

0.1 Hot ass biotch "future wife"

The oil-filled, radiator-style space heater should have no trouble heating that space.

Until recently my snake room was in an unheated, uninsulated garage. The ceiling did have a small amount of blown in cellulose, but that's it.

The room was 7'x7'x8' and had two exterior walls and two walls that were interior to the rest of the garage. The door was a typical hollow-core door.

Since it was only temporary I could not go all out on insulation. What I did was discover an insulation material called Reflectix which looks like bubble-wrap covered with aluminum foil. It has a minimal R value but is able to block 97% of radiant heat - the type of heat produced by your space heater.

I loosely stapled reflectix to the ceiling, walls, and the hollow door. I did not do anything to the bare concrete floor. The room ended up looking like this:

This picture was taken before covering the door and ceiling, but you get the point.

With this setup and a small ceiling fan I was able to heat that room to 85* with my space heater set to only 600 watts. The temperature of the lower boxes was just a few degrees cooler than the boxes set on top of the rack. That was a height difference of over 5'.

When the temperatures dropped to 20* below zero the space heater still did it's job and still at 600 watts. Due to amperage concerns in the rest of the garage I had to shut the ceiling fan off and only during the coldest periods did I have to stop keeping snakes on the bottom most level of my rack.

So my point of this lengthy reply is to preach the issues of insulation with a reflective component.

The outside walls are insulated...

You mean exterior walls, correct? Do you know what type of insulation was used?

Are the walls interior to the rest of the basement uninsulated?

... but the floor is still concrete and is really cold.

Do you have the money, time, and interest in finishing the floor?

The ceiling is not finished.

This will make a huge difference, especially if you can add a reflective insulation on your ceiling where it's most important. DO NOT just go out and buy regular insulation. Radiant heat is very good at passing through normal means of insulation.

If I were you I'd start with finishing the ceiling. I have several ideas on how to do this but pictures will help. I'd also add a small ceiling fan.

Insulating the floor would be great but let's start with the ceiling. And if those interior walls are not insulated you should do them as well.

I don't recommend stapeling Reflectix to the walls, but you may have to do so to the already-insulated and finished exterior walls.

BTW, my new snake room is 9'x17' and is in the back of my third garage stall. It is mostly below grade as our house is built into a steep hill. I framed the room out with 2x4's and for insulation just used the 1.5" foil-covered poly-iso insulation board. I shoved it into the stud bays so that there would be an air space inbetween the drywall and the insulation. This air space is very important. I also have a slight air space behind the insulation. This is also important, albeit not as important as the air space in front.

The ceiling just has normal attic batting. I need to add Reflectix before next winter.

For the floor I just laid treated 2x4's on their side and shot them into the concrete. I then shoved 3/4" foil-covered poly-iso all the way to the concrete, therby leaving a 3/4" air space between my subfloor and the insulation face. Then 3/4" plywood subfloor and linoluem.

Even on our coldest days here in South Dakota my vertical temperature gradient has been no more than 2*. And that's measured over the entire 8'2" of the height of the room.

The vertical temperature gradiant of the space actually occuped by cages in only 1*. That's about 6' so pretty impressive.
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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)