Space Heater for Small Room

My reptile room is a small room. It's in the basement, which unfortunately gets pretty cold in the winter, despite me insulating the window and under the door.

I've been getting by with a cheap electric space heater with a built-in thermostat that I check several times a day, but I'd like to look at making things safer and more stable in there.

What is a small, affordable space heater that would work well in my snake room? Could I hook it up to a cheap hydrofarm thermostat for safety, or would I need to get a more expensive proportional thermostat for it?

And...how do I hang a probe from the ceiling? :confusd:

Actually space heater with built in thermostat is not that great of an idea, the thermostat will be the first thing to fail in my case making the temps in the room shoot to 100 degrees (happened twice in a 3 year period)

The best thing is to get a oil filled heater like this http://www.homedepot.com/p/Pelonis-1...218H/202295910 and use a reliable external thermostat http://www.reptilebasics.com/thermos...stat-prewired/

I would not recommend a cheap thermostat + it must be able to handle 1500 watts.

Costly investment but worth the piece of mind, I have used this myself for 5 years now and could not imagine trusting anything else. :gj:

We keep our balls in our bedroom closet. I run a cheap small space heater with built in thermostat to keep the room at 80 degrees. It only kicks on about once an hour for a couple of minutes. Been working well so far. We are in and out of the closet all day so it is easy to verify temps. I will not use it once it warms up. I'm just going to close the vent so no AC blows in there.

I agree with Deborah. Get a good thermostat that can handle the wattage of the space heater. Hydrofarm's max is a 1000w btw.

Here's a photo just for reference sake.

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/02/23/enuju8av.jpg

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We use a delonghi oil.filled.heater. Its black and bought it for $70 at lowes. Dont have it plugged into a thermostat and has worked great last 2 years.

Thanks guys. I did some research and found an oil-filled heater with good reviews for $50 on eBay. I'll also be getting that thermostat from Reptile Basics. Making my snake room safer and more stable is a high priority now that I have some extra money.