Rodent room build

[OhhWatALoser]

First a rant. The city I used to live in at some point during me living there decided to change their no 6+ foot constrictor snake rule, to just no constrictor snakes at all. No grandfather clause or anything, just overnight I had a whole room of contraband. So obviously I needed to move to continue this hobby. Thankfully I was able to lay low and never have an issues with the city, but still took me a while before my once legal snakes were legal again.

So now the new house is a total fixer upper (exactly what I was looking for) and it happens to have a 2 car detached garage with an addition on the back of it. I decided I didn't want to raise rodents in the house this time, so I sectioned off part of the addition to be the new rodent room. Room will be 14.5ft x 15ft. I started by studding out the ceiling and built the wall to section it off. This also allowed me to jack up the sagging roof and give the "supports" a wall to sit on. While I was added made a loft above the room. Put up lights to see. Drywalled what wasn't finished, took out the window and studded that out. Started putting up shelves that will hold the water tubs.

My plans are to have valves in front of each water tub for easy fill up. Racks will roll under them and hook up. I want to do fiberglass panels on the wall for easy cleaning and I wont have to tape the walls lol. I'm not even sure on the flooring but I am thinking vinyl sheets just so it is smooth for rolling racks. I still need to bring gas and water over to it. Getting quotes for furnace and a/c. I am getting a big utility sink that will actually fit tubs in it. If i can't find a utility tub big enough, I swear to god there will be a bathtub in there. I also got a big pot growers exhaust fan. supposedly the carbon also cleans up the ammonia, so I am giving it a shot so my neighbors don't smell anything if the wind blows the wrong way.

I want to go all out on this and make these rodents convenient as possible to take care of. Any suggestions you can throw at me will be appreciated. Here what i have done so far:

[FranklinMorphs]

Firstly, great job, cool to see someone else who actually likes doing this kind of work.

One suggestion, when you do the wall pannels, offset the seams from the drywall seams. It looks like you're using standard drywall, so while the moisture will still make it into and through the drywall, it will penetrate the center much more slowly than at an unfinished seam, should you have any issues. An never run more than one row of the panels horizontally. If you have a window or something to get a panel under, it's fine, but if you would have to stack panels and have a horizontal seam, if any water gets into that seam, it's going to track across the seam first, and make the problem much bigger, much faster.

[OhhWatALoser]

thanks for the tips

[Freakie_frog]

You will need to circulate air!!. Make the floor washable and the walls too. The smell of rat pee and poo is going to ruin the drywall. AC and heating that many rats produce a lot of body heat especially in the summer. We use an 80,000 btu AC unit during the summer. We also use 2 - 36" fans that vent to the outside and 2 - 24" squirrel cage fans that run 24/7 to pump fresh air into the room. Our room is 40'x24'

[OhhWatALoser]

finished the water shelves, now I just need to plumb them. Added electrical for fans, water heater, and heat trace. started to insulate.

[PitOnTheProwl]

Looking good.

[OhhWatALoser]

finished insulation, forgot about the dehumidifier, added shelf and electrical for dehumidifier, added place to mount fan

[OhhWatALoser]

Trench to the garage, put in gas water electrical and ethernet pipes.

Dogs helped out in the crawlspace

Got drywall up on the ceiling, I highly suggest getting help for this, it sucked doing it by myself lol

[OhhWatALoser]

Well I havn't done much, been on a string of overtime and also had a little mishap at work that had my hands pretty tender, so I had a few days of not working on house. However I did get a nice craigslist steal today, 7 foot piece of corian for 25 bucks. Just needed a little modification.

Before:








almost fits the big tubs, at least we shouldn't be getting water all over the place now


Also started to tape the ceiling

[HenryTheSnake]

Keep up the great work and keep posting updates!!