If power goes out, how do I heat my BP's enclosure?

Hi all!
So springtime is just around the corner and with that, major thunderstorms in my neck of the woods. It is common to have power outages and I have my heat panel connected to a thermostat that is obviously run on household power. I am guessing that there are battery powered thermostats out there, but I am wondering which one is the best for a heat panel pushing 105 F?
If anybody has suggestions, I would love to read them!
Cheers!

If the power goes out mainly worry about the ambient temp and make sure it is within proper range.

In case of power outage you should have some heat packs (those used for shipping), or a hot water bottle if you only have only one animal, a buddy heater or generator if you have a room full of animals.

It is a very justified worry. I am going to elaborate on Deborahs post and suggest a thought process, rather than how to.

The answer is different for everyone, conditions and budget will make great impact.

Think in stages, often power failures fall into three types short term hours not days, a day or two, and then catastrophic.

Short term solutions maybe as simple as placing a good insulator over the enclosure. This may buy you two or three hours of acceptable ambients (74 being the cool end of normal and 70 being tolerable for a short term below starts to get to be a problem.)

After just insulating stars to be an issue I then remove the snake and place the animal in a smaller lower vented container with a warm water bottle (if you still can heat water! I have a Bbq) of a chemical heat pad. (remember they use oxygen so they need more air flow and some get very hot and the snake needs to be protected from the surface) If the smaller container is placed inside something like a stryofoam cooler (with some vent holes) it holds heat longer. That often will buy 24 hours more if you have a handful of chemical heat packs or multiple water bottles.

Over a really long term is where things get quite dicey. You are actually likely to be having serious issues as well. I have spend 7 days with no power and stranded once. It goes from an inconvenience, to a pain, to an serious survival situation fairly fast, the first 72 hours in my case. This is the point where the supplies you need and the snake need start to dwindle. Snake bag and snake kept under your cloths might be the only method. But to in a catastrophic power failure it is quite possible that the animal may not make it, if you are cold and have not eaten in days and can go to a emergency shelter but not take the snake you may well have to leave it behind. Sad but your well being may need to come first. Luckily things rarely get that bad.

Things to I plan, check the weather, if there is a big storm predicted and it is cold outside skip a feeding. Snakes 'empty' tolerate a wider temperature range than 'full' and cope with stresses better. Heat water I actually use a product called a 'snuggle safe' and when a storm starts I heat them in case. Make sure you have things like a little cooler with some vent holes in it, a snake bag, chemical heat pads, what ever else you may need. Do a dry run, take you emergency system somewhere cool (basement or porch someplace.) stick a thermometer with hi low recording inside and you heat method a see what happens so you have a sense of how long it can hold for.

Think in stages, stage one 24 hours most grid issues are repaired inside this. 72 hours the serious storms may slow down the repair process. longer is massive damage and not only the snake may need rescuing you may as well, it is impossible/difficult to plan for.

Deb's advice is spot on. I would also add that if you have an incubator then you really need a generator.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

It is a very justified worry. I am going to elaborate on Deborahs post and suggest a thought process, rather than how to.

The answer is different for everyone, conditions and budget will make great impact.

Think in stages, often power failures fall into three types short term hours not days, a day or two, and then catastrophic.

Short term solutions maybe as simple as placing a good insulator over the enclosure. This may buy you two or three hours of acceptable ambients (74 being the cool end of normal and 70 being tolerable for a short term below starts to get to be a problem.)

After just insulating stars to be an issue I then remove the snake and place the animal in a smaller lower vented container with a warm water bottle (if you still can heat water! I have a Bbq) of a chemical heat pad. (remember they use oxygen so they need more air flow and some get very hot and the snake needs to be protected from the surface) If the smaller container is placed inside something like a stryofoam cooler (with some vent holes) it holds heat longer. That often will buy 24 hours more if you have a handful of chemical heat packs or multiple water bottles.

Over a really long term is where things get quite dicey. You are actually likely to be having serious issues as well. I have spend 7 days with no power and stranded once. It goes from an inconvenience, to a pain, to an serious survival situation fairly fast, the first 72 hours in my case. This is the point where the supplies you need and the snake need start to dwindle. Snake bag and snake kept under your cloths might be the only method. But to in a catastrophic power failure it is quite possible that the animal may not make it, if you are cold and have not eaten in days and can go to a emergency shelter but not take the snake you may well have to leave it behind. Sad but your well being may need to come first. Luckily things rarely get that bad.

Things to I plan, check the weather, if there is a big storm predicted and it is cold outside skip a feeding. Snakes 'empty' tolerate a wider temperature range than 'full' and cope with stresses better. Heat water I actually use a product called a 'snuggle safe' and when a storm starts I heat them in case. Make sure you have things like a little cooler with some vent holes in it, a snake bag, chemical heat pads, what ever else you may need. Do a dry run, take you emergency system somewhere cool (basement or porch someplace.) stick a thermometer with hi low recording inside and you heat method a see what happens so you have a sense of how long it can hold for.

Think in stages, stage one 24 hours most grid issues are repaired inside this. 72 hours the serious storms may slow down the repair process. longer is massive damage and not only the snake may need rescuing you may as well, it is impossible/difficult to plan for.

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This is all good information. Last February we had a pretty bad ice storm that knocked trees down along with the power wires and we did not have power for four days straight. Luckily I did not have any snakes at the time. We could not get our house temperature above 50 degrees. We had a kerosene heater but it did not do much for the temps. We have electric heat and our water is well water so we didn't even have any water. It was so rough. I have a dog and a cat and it was pretty hard on them as well.

Very valid worry.. you've got me thinking now.. :) i'm just going to buy a generator.. they are less than $200 on amazon for a smaller one.. problem is the gas in an enclosed area..

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Originally Posted by JennyBP

Very valid worry.. you've got me thinking now.. :) i'm just going to buy a generator.. they are less than $200 on amazon for a smaller one.. problem is the gas in an enclosed area..

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If you're going to get one, spend a bit and get something in the 5000 watt range. You need to protect not just your snakes, but the contents of your refrigerator/freezer, especially if you have f/t feeders. My generator more than paid for itself when we lost power for four days in July a few years back and the high temperatures topped 100*F every day. My neighbors had to toss hundreds or even thousands of dollars in rotting meat, venison, etc. when the contents of their refrigerators and chest freezers got too warm. We lost nothing.

Make sure you run it outside in a well-ventilated area. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a real danger and it will kill.

Security is another issue. Generators are noisy and my neighborhood had a lot of extra foot and vehicle traffic between midnight and 6:00 a.m. when the power was out for four days. We had to make sure someone was awake at all times to ensure the generator didn't grow legs and walk away...

Also, if you get a more powerful one than you need, you can let your neighbors run an extension cord to it in exchange for helping keep it fueled up, and helping make sure it stays where it's supposed to. Plus, they won't complain about the noise if they're benefitting from it.

Finally, generator power is dirty. Don't plan on running a high-end digital t-stat on it, you're better off just using it to run a space heater to maintain the ambient temp in the snake room. If you have something like an incubator t-stat, make sure it's on a surge protector.

I keep some of those shipping heat packs on hand, and in the case of an emergency and I run out, I also keep mitten warmers on hand just in case. The problem with the latter is that they can get extremely hot (warped the plastic of my feeding tub) soif you use those, insulate them well from the BP.

If its just a few hours or overnight, I've got a portable battery pack for times like that.

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I agree on the generators a bigger one is more useful. Proportional stats need pure seine wave inverters I believe honda and yamaha have them but most others do not.

If you have deep pockets http://www.generac.com/for-homeowners/home-backup-power

also are perfect they power everything.

Thank you all for such helpful advice. I believe that a generator is something I should invest in. If not, then probably some heating pads would do the trick if I keep adding warm ones to the enclosure.

http://www.tsksupply.com/categories/Heat-Packs/

There are many types of heat packs, I always have a selection on hand and replace them when they expire. The little hand warmer ones are quite short lived. In my situation I have a battery back up good for around 8 hours maybe a touch longer. Then I have a catalytic heater and propane for 40 hours or so. After that 72 hour heat packs for my cooler holding system and enough for 9 days.

Somthing that wasn't mentioned about generators: you do have to be there to turn them on. If you are gone for long stretches you my want to invest in an automatic stand-by unit. They are more, but I work at a hardware store in a rural area and every year I have 3-5 people come in saying they came back from a trip to find thier food spoiled, pipes frozen/busted, and pets dead. A couple years ago an elderly gentleman went out to the garage to start it and never made it back to the house. Another option is to just switch to gas. Around here about 1/3 of homes use gas to heat (LP or Nat) because they simbly don't go out. If you are there most of the time a portable is awesome, just be sure to check out reviews before you purchase there are vast differences in product preformance and reliability across brands.

Generac home backup I linked earlier have transfer switches and usually run on gas. They also are used by many keepers and are comparable with herpstats and helix stats (likely herpkeeper and ecozone, I have no idea about the rest.)

Sadly they are quite costly.

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Originally Posted by Lyssa981

Somthing that wasn't mentioned about generators: you do have to be there to turn them on. If you are gone for long stretches you my want to invest in an automatic stand-by unit. They are more, but I work at a hardware store in a rural area and every year I have 3-5 people come in saying they came back from a trip to find thier food spoiled, pipes frozen/busted, and pets dead.

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Good point, between our critters and running a business out of the house, we're never gone more than a few hours, certainly not overnight, so I'd never considered a scenario where the home may be sitting empty for a day or two.

I wan't sure if mentioning brand names was OK, still learning the forum rules, but since someone did; Generac units are by far the best and most relieable, but also the most expensive. Ridgid is the one I tyically recomend as best value for what it is, it winds up comming in at about 1/2 the price, and gets great reviews.

The only thing to watch out for is that most proportional stats perform badly with some lower cost inverters. I have tried a number of back up systems and in my testing I have discovered that some cheap inverters cause a triac controller found in most proportional stats to stay on all the time. It would be tremendously sad to have a power failure and discover your snakes died from too much heat.

I have spoken to both Dion B (herpstat) and Jeff W (helix) and both say Generac work, it is why I suggest them I know they are compatible with proportional stats.

Do your research before you buy ask specifically about triac controlled thermostats. It would be sad to spend a large amount of money and end up with something just as dangerous to your pets as the power failure was in the first place. Be certain that the back up power will work with your stats.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sirensong26

I keep some of those shipping heat packs on hand, and in the case of an emergency and I run out, I also keep mitten warmers on hand just in case. The problem with the latter is that they can get extremely hot (warped the plastic of my feeding tub) soif you use those, insulate them well from the BP.

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Where does one get "those shipping heat packs?" What exactly are they called (please be specific) and where can they be purchased?

Thank you

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

http://www.tsksupply.com/categories/Heat-Packs/

There are many types of heat packs, I always have a selection on hand and replace them when they expire. The little hand warmer ones are quite short lived. In my situation I have a battery back up good for around 8 hours maybe a touch longer. Then I have a catalytic heater and propane for 40 hours or so. After that 72 hour heat packs for my cooler holding system and enough for 9 days.

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Again, thank you all for the help. I appreciate your advice! To let you all know, I am controlling a heat panel mounted on top of my Animal Plastics enclosure. My thermostat is a Hydrofarm Jumpstart. It is a simple thermostat because I have one snake as a pet and don't need anything fancy. Should I spend the large amount of money for a Generac generator, or a smaller, less expensive one?

A Generac is a whole house generator, designed to kick in and keep everything functioning when the power fails.

I have a portable generator since I only need enough electricity either to heat certain areas, e.g. kitchen and bathrooms to prevent pipes from freezing in the winter, and the snakes would get moved into the bathroom to take advantage of ambient heat. If the power fails in the summer then the snakes would likely be ok, and the generator would just be needed for the refrigerator and chest freezer, plus a few fans.

So, look at the different scenarios that affect you, what is your worst case scenario if the power fails (typically storms followed by extreme heat or cold), decide what exactly you need to run in each scenario, add up the power drawn by each appliance plus a safety factor of 10-15%, and pick a generator.

I live in Michigan, so the weather is a little screwy. However, a generator that can run my radiant heat panel and a space heater would be fine. Thank you for the advice.

The big difference is the transfer switch to my mind. It is the switch that when the power fails it immediately starts and runs the back up on its own. The power flickers and that is it. It does not require you to go start it, run cords ect. It is wired to the house and just takes over. You can wire a transfer switch to a gas generator but by the time you buy one and wire it you have just bought a stand by unit.

To my knowledge only Honda and Yamaha run pure seine wave energy if you have proportional units you really should use a pure seine wave power.