Heat the house? Heat the room? Heat the enclosure?

I tried this in the O/T forum with no answers, so my apologies for repeating myself... but I'm really curious! I keep reading people's forum posts saying that the room temperature where they keep their herps is in the 70's, so I'm wondering if you heat the whole house that warm, or just the herp room? I don't know anyone where I live who heats their whole house that high, especially 24/7. I shudder to think what our electric bill would look like if I used a space heater to heat the living room to that temperature all the time with a space heater.

So what temperature do you keep your home at? Where do you live? I can't imagine that all the snake owners in cold climates heat their entire house to over 70 degrees or even run space heaters at what it would take to keep room in an old New England house that warm when it is 0 degrees outside, but it always seems like the common heating advice on the forum is good for heating an enclosure 10 or maybe 15 degrees warmer than the room, not 20 or 30 degrees warmer... but if you really do need to achieve that kind of temperature differential, you have even more incentive to buy expensive heating equipment that will get the enclosure to where you need it because even a fairly large enclosure is going to be way cheaper to heat than a whole room, let alone your whole house.

We're probably a somewhat extreme example because my partner is pretty obsessed with energy efficiency, but our programmable thermostat goes up to 62 in the evenings and mornings when we're home, and down to 52 during the day when we're not (although the temp doesn't generally go below 55ish unlesss it'ss particularly cold outside). We have passable insulation, but not great; and since we rent, there's not that much we can do to improve on it where it really needs it. Each of us has a room we use as an office, and if we're home during the day we're mostly in those rooms and use small space heaters for just the time that we're in there. And we have lots of sweaters, and often wear hats inside the house.

So we go to what sounds like extreme lengths to heat the snake's cage - 80 watt RHP on a 20-gal tank, with three sides of the tank covered in foam, and a heat mat for a hot spot. That sounds a little nuts, but the RHP is on a herpstat and keeps the ambient temperature nice and even (there is also a heat mat for the hot spot, running usually at around 50%). The whole setup consumes an average of maybe 65 watts, give or take, this time of year. It also happens that since the RHP is almost the size of the whole lid, the humidity stays in pretty well too (I modified the lid a bit to mount the RHP, so the ventilation comes more up and under, instead of straight out the top like with screen, so I think that helps too). We could heat the room the tank is in, but that would require more like 800 or 1000 watts, maybe more. The heat panel is expensive, but compared to running a space heater it pretty much pays for itself in like two months. (When we take the snake out of the tank, we heat up one of the offices first and bring him in there - we don't sit around with him in a 55 degree room!)

So, I'm really curious what strategies the rest of y'all use who live in cold climates and don't necessarily have a large collection in a dedicated room.

I live in Alberta where the majority of the year is cold and snowy and my house stays at 74 f (23 c) until it warms up for summer then the A/C will run to cool it.
It may be excessive but I like to come home take off my snow gear and walk around in shorts and a t shirt like I'm in the Bahamas :cool: Meanwhile its -22 f (-30 c) and blistering winds outside...

I keep my current snakes in my room in the basement with RHPs.
My new boa is upstairs in a QT tub with just heat tape. I get about a 4 degree difference in room temp from upstairs to down stairs

Eventually I plan on changing one of my spare bedrooms into a snake room and will simply heat that room but for now, RHPs work well

Everything depends on the number of animals you have, if you have a dedicated room and what works and is more efficient.

My personal case

I live in the south, and my snake room is right under the roof so it allows me to achieve temps in the mid to high 80's between the months of April to October/November, therefore during that time I do not provide a hot spot in the enclosures.

For me it was a common sense decision really I could have the room on the main AC and have it cooled down to 75 and have a hot spot of 86 but it would be counter productive and not very efficient. The room is therefore sealed of from the AC unit and we let the temp rise using only ambient temps.

During the winter the room is heated with a oil filled heater and kept at 75 degrees while providing a hot spot of 86 degrees.

So basically efficiency wise I run the snake room at no cost most of the year.

As for our living areas they are kept between 68 during the winter and 75 in the summer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CantHelpIt

I live in Alberta where the majority of the year is cold and snowy and my house stays at 74 f (23 c) until it warms up for summer then the A/C will run to cool it.
It may be excessive but I like to come home take off my snow gear and walk around in shorts and a t shirt like I'm in the Bahamas :cool: Meanwhile its -22 f (-30 c) and blistering winds outside...

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Holy crap, I hope you have good insulation! I don't wanna think about our heating bill if we did that! My better half makes the argument that when it's cold and snowy outside, 55 or 60 feels toasty warm when you walk in from outside, so it must be good enough. :P I can't imagine that 74° in the house is the norm in Alberta, though, is it? That can't possibly be what all Canadian snake owners do?

We don't have A/C though, so heat is free in the summer.

I have a dedicated snake room-but the door stays slightly open and there's a lot of traffic so difficult to keep my temps exact. I'm running an oil filled heater on a ranco to keep the room temp around 74-76. My cages are pvc with heat tape and rhp-run as needed on thermostats. My house temp is set to 68-70. In the summer I have a window AC for the rare hot times since my house doesn't have central air. I know running the heater costs me about $40 a month but I've never been real worried about power costs, there's five fish tanks running downstairs that cost me at least as much as the reptiles do. I like it warm in my house so there's no way we would keep the house temps lower either.