Temperature gradient and heat sources: the never-ending headache!

[Coluber42]

Insulation is going to be your friend here with this issue. You can head to home depot and they have a plethora of options for insulating. You could buy some actual insulation made for houses, or simply get some styrofoam slabs and affix it to the sides of the enclosure. They also have spray insulation in small canisters.

This is why AP T8s are so popular. They have 1/2 inch PVC that really holds the heat great.

65 deg is considered pretty cold for a snake enclosure to be in, but can definitely work given the proper insulation.

This is sort of a pet peeve of mine - so much of the heating advice seems to assume you heat your house considerably warmer than almost anyone I know in my area. I shudder to think of what my heating bill would look like if I tried to keep even one room at a constant 70° all winter.

Yes, you can use space heaters or zones if your heating system has them, but that's a considerable energy expenditure when all you really need to do is heat a handful of cubic feet where the snake lives. Big heat panels are expensive, but they are way cheaper than heating a whole room, let alone heating a whole house to 70° even during the workday when no one's home. Given a rough national average price of electricity, a 1000-watt space heater costs something on the order of $25/mo to run full time, and lots of the frequently recommended oil-filled heaters are more like 1500 watts. A 120-watt RBI panel costs 88% less in electricity, so the difference in the power bill alone adds up to the cost of the panel within just a few months.

At the moment, I use an 80-watt RHP on a 20-long tank (with foam around three sides plus the bottom) and it maintains perfect even ambient temperature, even though in the winter the room temperature can drop to 55° during the workday.

The TL;DR is: If you can afford the energy bill to heat the whole room, you can afford to buy insulation and as big an RHP as you need in order to heat just the enclosure instead.

[bcr229]

This is sort of a pet peeve of mine - so much of the heating advice seems to assume you heat your house considerably warmer than almost anyone I know in my area. I shudder to think of what my heating bill would look like if I tried to keep even one room at a constant 70° all winter.

As an FYI, if you store your bulk frozen feeders in a small chest freezer, and if the chest freezer is in the snake room, then that room stays toasty all winter if you keep the door closed.

Hey I'm running the freezer anyway, might as well put it where the heat exhaust does some good.

[JoshSloane]

Didnt mean to be peevish, in Colorado our thermostat for the entire home is set at about 71 most of the time. In the winter we use an oil heater to heat the entire room up to 83-84. Once spring and summer come the heater doesnt have to work as hard, and only supplies a small supplement amount of heat to add to the natural temps in the room. We just shut off the vents so that the air conditioning doesnt fight the heater.

The fact is that every situation is different, both geographically, financially and experience wise. What works for me with 15+ reptiles is going to be much different for someone with one snake. These are ectothermic animals living mostly in climates that would never naturally support their needs. We cannot bend them to our preferred home temperatures. With ectotherms we are beholden to the laws of thermodynamics, and starting with a cold room is just going to make your job that much harder. Thats not to say that it cant be done. I know of individuals who keep tortoises in fully enclosed areas in garages that get down into freezing temperatures at night. Yet they constructed HIGHLY insulated and heated enclosures that can pretty much stand up to any cold temperatures, and maintain temps in the mid 80s.

There is no right answer to the heating question, but I will tell you from experience that not starting out in a cold room is going to save a ton of time, energy and frustration.

[Coluber42]

Yes, of course it's harder to heat an enclosure in a cold room than a warm one, and it's more expensive to set up. But also, the equation changes when you are talking about heating 15 enclosures versus heating one or two. Running 10 120-watt RHP's is the same wattage as a 1200-watt heater, and would cost way more to set up and regulate, etc. But most people asking for heating advice because they can't get their enclosure up to where it should be have one or two snakes. People with larger collections still discuss heating methods, but they ask different kinds of questions.

In any case, I still think that if someone complains about the price tag of a large RHP for one animal (or additional insulation, additional heat mats, whatever), recommending that they heat the whole room with an oil-filled heater or crank up the thermostat for the whole house instead is bad advice because it will exceed the initial setup costs of heating the enclosure fairly quickly.

And there are definitely plenty of people who have figured out how to heat a small number of enclosures in a cold room, and any number of ways to make it work; I don't think the first advice should have to be to heat the whole room instead.

[JoshSloane]

I never advised anyone to heat their whole room as I do. And I always mention that everyone's situation is different. I recommended that the OP could stick with ONE heat source inside their enclosure, and rely on improved insulation to achieve correct temperatures, and not worry about a hot spot.

Regarding background room temperatures, all I am saying is that having your room at least at standard room temps of low 70s, you are going to have a much easier time.

[Gio]

I never advised anyone to heat their whole room as I do. And I always mention that everyone's situation is different. I recommended that the OP could stick with ONE heat source inside their enclosure, and rely on improved insulation to achieve correct temperatures, and not worry about a hot spot.

Regarding background room temperatures, all I am saying is that having your room at least at standard room temps of low 70s, you are going to have a much easier time.

I totally agree with this.

There are so many variables from keeper to keeper, and house to house.

Personally I like to heat my room to a certain temp and allow the heat panels to regulate off the thermostat. With a semi heated room, I'm not blasting an RHP at 100% of its power the whole time to achieve a desired temp.

I also use a night drop which changes the entire climate of the cage over night. The room alone is sufficient for 8 hours of cooler temps.

There are many ways to achieve the end result. The trick is finding what is best for you.

From what I remember at the beginning of this thread, the O/P was certainly within an acceptable temp range.