How to heat a few reptiles without causing a power outage

[MunchyRawr]

Let me introduce by saying I stalk this forum occasionally, but this is my first time posting - I tend to ramble, so please bear with me. Also I'm not sure if this is in the right forum.

So to explain, I live in a humble little apartment and for now I've only got 3 reptiles - a ball python and two leopard geckos. I want more scaley babies, but my boyfriend was concerned that all the lamps and heat pads would make our power go out. Now I don't know much about how electrical sources work, but when we have too many things on at once, our unit's power goes out and we have to call a grumpy super to go into the locked basement to turn our power back on. The last time we made our power go out, we had two 70-watt spotlight bulbs, two 65-watt red night bulbs, and one 15-watt heat mat, in addition to the lights of 3 rooms being on, with two air conditioners and (probably the straw that broke the camel's back here) a little microwave.

Now, I don't want to have to worry about causing my power to go out every summer when we've got the air conditioners on again, and between then and now the major change was that I separated the leos, so that's a whole extra tank that needs heating. I'm slightly concerned about this summer, but because I know our limits a little better, I'm confident I can just take extra care with the extra appliances being on.

So I guess my question is, if I want to add another herp or two to my living room, how could I go about heating all their tanks without causing my power to go out again? I'm not sure what heat tape is or how it works - I tried looking it up on Amazon and saw a pipe thingy?

Thank you in advance to anyone that replies, or even has the patience to read through my whole post! 😅

[Godzilla78]

Look at circuit breakers in your electrical panel. Each circuit breaker is linked to one circuit. They have numbers of amps. Amps are the amplitude of electrical power that can be drawn before that circuit breaker overloads and trips the power out.
If you are running window AC units that plug into the wall, you are going to have issues, because air conditioners draw a large amount of amps.
That is why houses with central AC have a dedicated circuit just for the AC.
You will have to run the AC on a circuit that doesnt have much else on it.
So for example,you could run the AC on the “living room” circuit. But make sure your herp systems are running on a separate circuit, like a bedroom circuit for example.
Also, in general running AC is going to draw a lot of electricity, and can overload your whole electrical service of it is too small.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MunchyRawr]

Ah, so you're saying there may be different circuits that power different parts of my apartment, and to spread out my usage between as many circuits as possible? That makes sense, so I guess I have to go down there with the super and have a look.

Meanwhile, do you have any tips on heating a few tanks while using the least amount of electricity possible? Essentially, is there a more efficient heat source than just having 1-3 lamps on each tank?

[dakski]

Ah, so you're saying there may be different circuits that power different parts of my apartment, and to spread out my usage between as many circuits as possible? That makes sense, so I guess I have to go down there with the super and have a look.

Meanwhile, do you have any tips on heating a few tanks while using the least amount of electricity possible? Essentially, is there a more efficient heat source than just having 1-3 lamps on each tank?

What kind of tanks do you have? Do you own or rent the apartment? As stated above, is there a way to see the amperage of the circuits and what outlet is on which one?

In general, reptile tanks do not draw a ton of power. Heat mats less than lights/CHE, and Flexwatt is very efficient, as can be RHP's, depending on wattage and thermostat usage.

If we could get more info on your setup that would be very helpful.

Generally, enclosed tanks, like Boaphile, AP, etc, are much more efficient and insulated and take much less power to heat.

Also, I hope you are using thermostats to control your heat sources. If so, and depending on the kind, they will not be drawing full power either ever, or often.

I have 5 boaphile tanks, all 6X2', 4 that are 12 inches high and one the is 18 inches high.

The tallest one has a 60 watt basking bulb and two 13 watt (or there about) fluorescent UVB bulbs.

All have a large flexwatt and RHP on the hot side, and a medium flexwatt on the cool side.

I run redundant on/off thermostats set to a 1 degree F sensitivity. In a 68F room, they probably run three out of every ten minutes and do not draw much electricity.

I probably drew as much electric using two 40G tanks with 2 heat lamps and CHE and UTH. The heat just doesn't stay in!

Anyway, if you can provide more info, I think it would be helpful.

[CALM Pythons]

If its a older style apartment most have all Wall plugs on the same circuit except Kitchen & Bath.. You may not have the option to dedicate circuits. Not to mention older apartments refrigerators are sometimes on the wall plug circuits if the apartment wasn't build with a dedicated plug. It sounds like thats what going on as you didn't mention "Reset Plugs" which are what the new style and up to Codes electrical services have. They make smaller UTH's that are only 8 watts.. Something like that is less than running multiple Lamps/CHE's at 60 to 100 watts each.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk