For those with ball python "rooms"

1) How warm do you keep them?

2) What is your optimal temperature and how much fluctuation do you allow?

3) What is your method of heating? (Please note I'm not all that curious to know what kind of heat you're providing in your racks, but what you use to heat the ambient air temps) Baseboards? Oil-filled heaters? Heated flooring? Anything else?

4) Do you provide a night-drop of ambient temps?

Let me know, I am thinking of making some modifications to our room.

Oil filled heater with hydrofarm tstat set at 80. Room stays 78-80. Ceiling fan for air circulation.

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking oil-filled heater on a t-stat too but I was speaking with another ball python breeder who is also an electrician, and he said it would be very difficult to find a t-stat that would be able to handle the wattage of an oil-filled heater. The one I have currently is 1500W I believe.

Is your heater smaller/less wattage?

I try to keep my ambient room temp at 78 degrees. I use an oil filled space heater with a built-in thermostat (and I check the room multiple times daily to verify temps). I don't get much fluctuation in the room, generally never more than 3 degrees in either direction. The racks are all running flexwatt hooked to appropriate thermostats. I don't drop my temps at night.

Here are a couple of quick cell phone snaps from after I rearranged the room on Sunday. (ignore the messy shelves behind the racks. Those are getting cleaned off and out this weekend)

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...pse9f5a545.jpg

(You can see the heater in this pic...)
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...psca084ed4.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...ps065a2cda.jpg

I have a hydrofarm T-stat hooked up to a 20 dollar fan powered heater from Lowe's. It raised my electric bill about 15 bucks a month and I keep it at 74 which leaves the room 72-75 and gives some wiggle room in case the heater for the house kicks on and heats it all at once. I have crested geckos in there and they'll die over 80 degrees for a period of time, so I play it safe.

Oil filled heater with a built in thermostat that's set to "3." I think the scale goes up to 5... But then that's hooked to a hydrofarm on/off thermostat. Ceiling fan runs 24/7 for circulation. Keeps the room around 76-78. I also have the vent in the room open about halfway so the house heater/AC does affect the room a bit. I have to tweak the settings every season or so when we switch from AC to heat and back again. No night drop.

The door is also cracked open using this device: http://www.latchnvent.com. I have the cats' litter box in the snake room and this keeps the doggie with the hankering for kitty turds out. Also helps with circulation to keep the door cracked. Don't notice the heater working exceptionally hard (actually most times I go in there and its off).

During the cooler months I heat the room with a oil filled heater (plugged into a ranco t-stat) and keep it at 76/77 degrees. I provide a hot spot of 88 degrees.

During breeding season the room temps is 76 degrees and the hot spot is lowered to 82/84 degrees. (November to February)

During the summer things are a bit different rather then cooling down the room I let the room get as high as it gets, usually 84/86 degrees and do not offer a hot spot.

My oil filled heater is 1500 watts and the Ranco T-stat has a maximum load of 1500 watts http://www.reptilebasics.com/ranco-etc-111000-pre-wired (I use the one wired for room heater), I have used this system for 7 years now without any issue.

My big issue is that the heat stays up at the ceiling level.

The room is in my basement and it's a low ceiling so there's no room for a ceiling fan. I have a small fan blowing across the room near the ceiling but it doesn't bring the heat down.

Ceiling height is around 80 degrees, midway is 75 and the floor is 70. Any suggestions?

Get a circulating fan. They are the ones you can tilt upward. Put it in a corner and point it 45 degrees toward the opposite corner of the same wall. One that looks like this:

http://www.diamondtool.net/sites/def...761_0_orig.jpg

Mr. Lang, I do have a couple of those exact fans sittin' around, but I was thinking I may get a smaller one and mount it on the ceiling. Our room is very tiny and I think that fan, even on low would be overkill.

I've decided to go with the oil-heater, but I am wondering for those of you with oil heaters (it seems almost everybody) do you do anything special to protect a potential escapee from coiling itself up in between the fins of the oil heater? I was thinking of building a little cage around the heater with the 1/4" hardware cloth I have leftover from our rat racks. I mean, I highly doubt if a snake did get out they would go to the middle of the room and climb up the heater...but you never know and I would feel just horrible if it happened!