brick baking

There was a post a while back (i can't find it now) someone came up with the idea of soaking a brick in water then puttig it in their enclosure to help with humidity. It seems like a good idea and now that it's been getting colder and my heat has been kicking on more often i've been dealing with low humidity even with my humidifier running in the room. So here is my question. I'm using a small piece of cinder block and I was wondering if I should bake it in the oven to kill any germs before I put it in the tank. If so how long??

-Troy

You could just wash it in hot soapy water (use a scrub brush) and then soak it in a 10% bleach solution for 20-30 minutes. Then rinse and let it air dry (or even better, sun dry) for 24 hours. Safer than baking I would think and even more effective.

-adam

i'll probablly give it a good soaking after the bleach soaking to make sure all the bleach is gone. I don't want to have bleach water evaporating in the tank.

I clean stone, brick and wood all the time with anti-bacterial dish soap and then bake them at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes to sterilize. Works fine.

Bleach solution works great too....I just can't stand the smell. Chlorhexidine (nolvasan) works too and is not toxic. That is what I use now instead of bleach.

Me too .... I love Nolvasan! Everything smells sooo clean when you're done scrubbing down with it. :D

I just suggested bleach because it's cheap and easy to get, but if you can go the extra yard, chlorhexidine rocks!

-adam

I ran some hot water in the sink and put some anti-bacterial soap in with a little virosan and a splash of bleach. I just got done scrubbing it down and it's soaking now.

Adam you mentioned that soaking is safer than baking the brick. What could happen if I bake it???

Sometimes when you try to bake a rock it can explode. This in mind I have never baked a brick. Any moisture in the brick that can't get out fast enough during baking may cause it to blow apart at various velocities. Yikes!
Boiling rocks and bricks for twenty minutes will kill all hiding crawlies and you'll never have to replace broken stove door glass.

AHHHHHH *running to oven to turn it off* I wasn't expecting that answer. I was thinking more along the lines of it might not kill all the bacteria and other bad stuff. Well my oven and hunk of cinder brick are cooling as we speak and nothing has blown up........yet. It baked for about 8 minutes before I saw this blowing up post.

Blowing up of a brick is a bit extreme, rocks yes, brick much less likely since many bricks are backed in the first place, it would take really really high heats to blow an already manufactured brick. The temps they bake them at in the first place is I would think it much higer than your home oven, but I guess better safe than sorry, though I have baked many a brick for heat in the winter. Thats a whole other story.

I've soaked it for 20 min in bleach/virosan/antibacterial water for 20 min, baked it for 15 min and boiled it for 20. Needless to say if there is anything harmful left living in or on this thing it deserves to live there!

Quote:

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Blowing up of a brick is a bit extreme, rocks yes, brick much less likely since many bricks are backed in the first place, it would take really really high heats to blow an already manufactured brick.

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Yep they're baked when made, and not as dense as a rock so the risk is smaller for bricks. The exploding would be a result of moisture inside the brick/rock that is beginning to try to boil out. If the water can't escape the interior of the item fast enough......shrapnel. Baking will maybe probably most likely I suppose be okay for a brick, but I'm too attached to my oven to try it. LOL, my wife puts up with a lot from me, but................

How much moisture will a brick really hold?

i'm not sure, I guess I will find out.

through my own reasoning, i HIGHLY doubt bricks will explode... here's why i think that

the reason why ROCKS can explode is because water can be trapped deep within & when you heat it up that water obviously expands as it turns into a gas... that's what makes it explode. But as long as you take a rock that's not by a lake or river (potentially soaking it water for many YEARS) it should be just fine. Bricks are too porus to explode. the steam has many more passageways to escape than in a rock.

in fact about 10-15 years ago i took part in an indian sweat hut ceremony & we heated up rocks in a fire... they told us that as long as we don't take the rocks that were near the lake we should be just fine. i don't remember a single one exploding & they were sitting in some seriosly hot coals for quite some time.

moved to the caging forum.

Moved to the caging forum?? This has to do with humidity isn't that a husbandry issue? I guess it really doesn't matter.