How much does heating your snake room affect your bill?

This is my first post on this forum, after being a long term lurker. Finally decided to make an account to ask this question. I ave noticed that many ball python keepers have a separate room, heated and dedicated to the snakes. I myself do happen to have a spare bedroom, and was thinking about turning it into my herp room. My worries were that heating this room to around 80F (or maybe 78?) in order to keep snakes warm enough in their racks. With baseboard heaters (and terrible victorian insulation), keeping the heat on all the time with cold summers (night time temps without heat around 68) and even colder winters (50 :O). I will (if I move my snakes and leo into that room) cover the room windows with saran-wrap to keep the cold out and the heat in.

So enough beating around the bush, my question is: how much does heating your herp room add to your heating bill?
What do you use to heat the room?
Do you think it would be worth it to insulate the room better? (don't really want to tear out my drywall but will do if I have too :/)

Anyways, I hope this community has some answers :) From what I've seen, this is a really nice community.

well, I can really only answer one of your questions. I use an oil filled electric heater in my snake room. I think most others who go with room heating do as well. The difference is that I live in South Florida and only need it a couple months of the year. It accounts for 100% of my heating bill!

my heater uses 900 watts. since it sounds like yours would be running continuously, figure about 700 x the cost per KWH you are paying per month. This rate should be available on your electric bill. And you'll want a good proportional thermostat to go with it.

Can you recommend a heater and thermostat?

I use an oil-filled heater as well. The trailer is incredibly drafty. The snake room has a hole in the corner because the whole trailer is twisted (whoever put the trailer here didn't know how to set it up right), and the bathroom is separating from the trailer. Over the winter I tacked a blanket up over the window, and laid blankets over the bottom of the bathroom and the bedroom door, and it only helped marginally. Between the snake room heater, our monitor heater, and the two bathroom heaters, our bill goes up from $100-120 in the summer to ~$175 in the winter (this is based off one winter and this spring/summer). I set the heater to 85F over the winter because the room is so drafty that most of the heat is swept out, so certain parts of the room is 74-80F and other parts are 85-88F. I have no clue what our power bills were like at the apartment, didn't bother to ask.

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Originally Posted by Thistles

Can you recommend a heater and thermostat?

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this is the brand heater that I have:
https://www.amazon.com/Lakewood-5500.../dp/B000FD594O

seems almost everyone on this forum uses either Vivarium Electronics or Herpstat thermostats. I use VE-300. the heater has settings for 600/900/1500 watts. The VE-300 is rated for max 1200 watts, so be sure your thermostat can handle the load. I use the 600 or 900 watt settings.

Adding up my wattages and doing the math, I'm probably paying $75 or more per month. I don't really have a bill to compare it to otherwise, as I have always had critters, so no bill without to compare it to. But I also have a lot of lizards, so I burn more watts on things like running basking lights for 12hrs a day. Snakes don't burn as much juice.

In the winter my room heater adds $30-40 a month, I have this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002PLQ4T8..._t2_B004BZFQB8 with a ranco thermostat and run it on low, keep the room low 80s. I haven't insulated it better although it could use it, we do cover the windows in plastic during winter.

It's hard for me to say for several reasons:
- We have a machine shop in the garage. The lathe and mill draw 220 3-phase; running them is like running three dryers simultaneously.
- I have a dedicated small chest freezer for snake food. It's in the herp room so the exhaust from it helps heat the room. As a result the room doesn't need supplemental heat in the winter, but in the summer it can actually get too hot in there if I'm not careful.

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Originally Posted by bcr229

in the summer it can actually get too hot in there if I'm not careful.

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I can sympathise with this. Right now having to leave the door open a bit in mine as the ambient get way too warn. Downside is it kills my ability to maintain stable humidity.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thistles

Can you recommend a heater and thermostat?

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Herpstat or Vivarium Electronics are good thermostats.