Utilities bills change with new reptiles?

[trousersnakes]

Has anyone noticed if they are paying a lot more running all the UTH and lights from their reptile rooms. I am wondering how much extra people are paying a month to keep everything going or if it is not that big of a change per month.

[Slim]

Unless you have a whole room running 24/7 dedicated to snakes (and many here do), you're not going to see a big difference.

Honestly, if you run your snake gear 24/7, AND unplug all the other things around your house while not in use during the day when you're gone, you'll probably save money.

[Annarose15]

I didn't notice much of an increase with just my flexwatt for my two racks, but electricity went up ~$40/month in the winter due to the space heater in my snake room. During the summer, I don't run any supplemental heat (even flexwatt) due to how warm the room gets on its own, so it probably balances out somewhat over the course of the year (also have AC vents closed so it doesn't try to cool that room). I just switched from a standard space heater to a radiant oil-filled heater, so I don't know yet how much that has improved my heating efficiency.

[evan385]

So my stepdad is just full of crap when he's telling he that what I am using now for heat with is 50 watts altogether which is constant is supposedly $40 more per month?
Edit: Nevermind, did not read annarose's post. I am currently using a large space heater.

[Annarose15]

So my stepdad is just full of crap when he's telling he that what I am using now for heat with is 50 watts altogether which is constant is supposedly $40 more per month?
Edit: Nevermind, did not read annarose's post. I am currently using a large space heater.

Yeah, the space heater is what hit me - but it was really only Oct-Feb last year. This year has been so warm that I don't think I've seen nearly as much difference. If you're using the standard "blower" type heater, I strongly recommend switching to the oil-filled heater - I'm using mine on a 900w setting, which doesn't seem to be running even as constantly as the 1500w blower one was previously.

[Slim]

I did not realize we were talking about a space heater. Those things are very inefficent. If you run it 27/7, I could see $40 a month. I don't know about the 50 watts estimate, but I do know they pull a ton of amps.

[MrBig]

It's about 30-40$ more per month when averaged out over a year. There is an excellant video on the cost of keeping 30 adult ball pythons on snakebytes tv I beleive, fairly accurate in the estimates of about 3-5000$ per year. This includes bedding, feeders, electricity, and the rest of the normal expenses once already set up.

[ShockBunny]

The space heater is what kills. All my critters are in my bedroom, so the heater would have been running anyway. My mom complained about it (I'm yet another college grad begrudgingly moving back in to the family home to look for work), so I sat down and worked out how much I owed her and how much was just a normal spike in cost for heating a 100 year old house.

What I did was multiply the wattage of each heating element (heat pads, lamps, etc.) by the number of hours they run. Multiply by the # of days each month. Electric companies charge by the kilowatts per hour, so multiply by your kilowatt/hr rate. Then divide by 1000 to convert from watts to kilowatts. All of my critters (frillie, 3 snakes, leo, and a small dubia colony) only came out to about $15/month at a rate of $0.12/kilowatt hr.

(Wattage * Hours * Days * Rate) /1000 = monthly cost

I might be COMPLETELY wrong on that formula, but it seemed to satisfy my mom at least. XD

[snake lab]

Im paying about 300 bucks extra a month. Now that includes runnin the space heater in the walk in incubator, space heater in the snake room, space heater in the rodent building and all the racks.

[PitOnTheProwl]

I'm pushing an extra $60ish with heating the reptile room and the rodent shed.