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.

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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.

Do you mind linking me to the ranco thermostat that you use?

5 year old dead thread

I can't really tell the difference in my bill, but it rarely even gets as cold as 40F lows in the dead of winter here. When I lived in Denver, CO it was about $35 a month but my collection was about double what it is now wattage wise.

My snakes are throughout my house, not in one room, but the difference is negligible anyway, with mostly colubrids that like room temps & using mostly low wattage UTH for heat- so my input here doesn't really count.

Practicing necromancy, I see! :rofl:

https://media2.giphy.com/media/26ufi...oGWs/giphy.gif


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by Spicey

Practicing necromancy, I see! :rofl:

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FYI, I knew that when I posted, but it's been a bit quiet around here lately so maybe we shouldn't rag on those who picked up an old thread rather than start a new one, eh? That's my take, anyway.

Psh Im back from the dead anyways

Insulation of the room makes a huge difference. Old drafty house, it cost me about 80 bucks a month to run my reptile room, it was about 64sqft. New house, I built the room. insulated 200sqft room ambient only (room is 86 degrees all the time). $35

I was joking. I see nothing wrong with resurrecting a dead thread if the topic is relevant. There's always someone new to see it!

;)

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Originally Posted by Spicey

I was joking. I see nothing wrong with resurrecting a dead thread if the topic is relevant. There's always someone new to see it!

;)

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I look at it that way too. I think in the past, some of us were too eager to poke fun at new members posting, after which some of them seemed to disappear. That's not our intention, but it appears that they didn't exactly feel "welcome" if they were new & just tried to post where they thought best.

costs me about 30$ more a month.

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

Psh Im back from the dead anyways

Insulation of the room makes a huge difference. Old drafty house, it cost me about 80 bucks a month to run my reptile room, it was about 64sqft. New house, I built the room. insulated 200sqft room ambient only (room is 86 degrees all the time). $35

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This is super interesting. My wife and I have discussed doing a new build, and I was "given permission" to do a reptile room/fish room. I'd love to hear more about your design process. Did you do anything other than insulate it, and did you add in any time saving items, like maybe a sink or something in the room?

Yeah, have a sink and a hose hooked up to a mixing valve so the water isn't too cold or too hot. I have a build thread on here but most of the photos were on photobucket before they got greedy.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...226_123802.jpg

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...226_123723.jpg

Actually in the process of building a new one out in the garage. Little bigger, more square 15x15 vs 20x10. Will have more fans as I feel air moving was an issue in my current room. Doing fiberglass wall panels for ease of cleaning and not getting the walls dinged up as much. Going to do a lot better prep work on the floor on this one lol. When I mop there's spots that grab the mop, it doesn't slide well. Still having a sink and mixing valve hose (love that thing lol..