Winter Emergency Preparation

I'm going out of town for about a week to visit family during the holidays but I'm concerned about what to do in the event there's a power outage and I'm not home. It gets really cold here (was twenty below the freezing this past week, but we were having a cold snap). What do you guys do to mitigate the damage in the event something were to happen?

Sorry i don't have any suggestions i'm just also interested in hearing what everyone else has to say. We don't really get the 20 below here but it would be really good to have a game plan for if and when we lose power. Aside from the obvious "buy a separate generator specifically for all the things hooked up to your snake enclosures."

Well, my general plan for if I'm in town and at home--(but anyone else reading, please let me know what you think of the logistics of my plan)
I have an insulated box (made out of styrofoam--just like the ones you put ice in during the summer months) and some handwarmer packs. The packs I have last ten hours and get pretty darn hot, my plan is to very carefully wrap them up into a pillowcase to prevent burning to keep things warm. Then I can put the snake in there for a duration of the outage.

To me that sounds like a pretty good solution to give yourself time to either wait out the outage or figure out a more long term setup. Plus with the container being easily portable even when warm, Worst case scenario of having to transport the snake temporarily to a location with power would be pretty easy.

Your preparedness plan will depend on how many snakes you have and how much available space you have. Someone living in an apartment with just a snake or two won't have the same needs as someone in a house who has a herp room and 100 snakes in a rack/tub setup.

If you just have one or two smallish critters, then secure each snake in a pillowcase or snake bag, and put that under your shirt next to your skin to keep the snake warm. Congrats - you'll have a bouncing BP baby bump!

If you have a few snakes you can put them into their own bags, load them all up in one tub or an insulated box with supplemental heat, put them in a warm car, and they'll be fine until they reach their destination - assuming you have somewhere to take them.

Someone planning to stay in place will need a generator. I wouldn't worry about running all of the t-stats and belly heat; in fact, a digital t-stat may not do well on dirty generator power. Just heat the herp room to the low/mid-80's F for a few days using a space heater.

Harbor Freight has several generators on sale right now; the 7KW Predator model is a steal IMO at $550 - and if I didn't already have two generators I'd be jumping on that one. Note that the larger workhorse models tend to be quite loud, so if you get one you may need to offer to let the neighbors run an extension cord to it in exchange for gas, if you want to maintain neighborly relations. If you plan to run it all the time, including all night, someone in the house needs to be awake at all times to make sure it doesn't walk away.

If I were going to be gone, I'd have someone who doesn't mind checking on them twice a day. Between that, and the room already being a higher temp due to window insulators and a space heater, they would be fine until the person came in to check.
We live in the city right now, so it's never long before the power comes back and the water doesn't go off. When my power goes out, I always get about 6 or 7 gallon jugs filled with hot water, put everyone into their travel containers, and use a blanket to put them in a 'tent' with the hot water bottles. Keeps them close to 80 for several hours. I also have hunting chest warmers if I need to bump the temp.

Depends on how many animals you have, if you are breeding and have an incubator running etc

For a few snakes some warmers used to ship reptiles are a good thing to have.

If you have a room full of snakes a buddy heater (which burns clean) http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Heater-F232...s=buddy+heater is a great inexpensive solution when use with a 20 lbs cylinder

And of course for both snakes and incubator you may want to invest in a generator.

I have both buddy heater and generator.

I have an electric backup such as this: http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/el...l#.VGug7jTF-So

http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Cana...id=250&hei=250

I plug it into the wall and then plug my heater into it. If the power does go out, this battery backup give my heater a full day or so of power - and hopefully the power is fixed by then. Just make sure that the power pack you buy allows the correct amount of watts that are required for your heater.

Rickys_Reptiles,

you beat me to it. Well i have a similar set up which consist of a battery tender, a motorcycle battery, and a power inverter for a car. I keep the battery charged with the tender, then i wire the positive/negative on the converter, to the the pos/neg on the battery, and then i can connect my 100w infrared bulb which also is wired to a home depot dimmer.

i then have a small sterilite tub, with a cover that snaps on the sides. I place my snake in a snake bag, then inside the tub, cover it, and with the light cranked up it will get the temps in there hot QUICK, then i work the dimmer to have the light lower hence keeping it perfect temp.

And there u have it.

Soon i will have a pure sine wave inverter, hooked up to 2 deep cycle batteries. Then im will be good to hook up my complete setup including my Ultratherm UTH and herpstat, and the light.

I like you idea of the hand warmer things. I used those when I used to work outside during winter. They do get pretty hot. but too hot to burn.