Anyone use space heaters as main heat source?

[aeio540]

I was wondering if anyone uses a space heater to provide heat for their snakes.

I bought a $13.00 space heater at wally mart about a month or so ago ad let me tell you even though the room is pretty much a sauna, I get the temperatures I need and the humidity never drops like when I used a powerful heat lamp. On my BP's tank I use a small heat lamp, dimmer w/25W red bulb to bump up his hot side to 92 degrees and my BCI is closest to the heater and her temperture is gradient falls between 83 cool and 89 hot and their humidity stays pretty constant around 64%.

Anyone have any experience or problems with this type of setup? Also, keep in mind, the room I keep them in is quite small and doubles as our home office.

[MATT FISHER REPTILES]

there are a lot of people in this hobby that do from what i have herd. i would not use one of those 13 dollor ones though. they are fire traps. go and buy a nice 80 dollor one that are much safer. if you watch the vpi video on ballpythons they say as long as you keep them in a room that is about 75-85 you dont need any other type of heat. i personally think 75 is to cold. butif you can keep it about 85 i dont see a problem.

[2kdime]

I don't use one as a main source. But I do have a walmart 35 dollar oil filled one on a ranco thermostat.
Its set at 82 degrees. My room is definetley warm. But its not warm enough for my primary heat. I'm very ocd about my temps. So I have a johnson control on my ball pythons cold side hooked to some flexwatt. It turns on and off for sure. But not as much as before I had the heater. And then flexwatt on the hot side respectively.

For my blood pythons tub he only has heat on his hot side. And his cold side is around 79 to 80. Which is perfectly fine.

My 2 cents.

Do try to get a little better heater for YOUR safety and your snakes. But to answer your question. Yes people do use heaters to maintain they're cold side temps without using additional heat. Such instance is when people use racks. And only provide heat for the hot side.

Sorr for the long reply.

[aeio540]

I was worried about the quality of a 13.00 heater but a few things got to me, for one it is on a pretty low setting, second it seems to be a better quality heater compared to ones 40 or 50 dollars more. Third, it was cheap because it was on sale.

I will look for a better heater but I doubt that this will be a permanent solution. This bad boy makes the entire room a sauna and I don't want to dedicate an entire room to them.

Again thanks for the heads up, I'll go look for some other ones in the mean time.

[Bruce Whitehead]

I know people will use oil filled ceramic heaters to heat the cool end/ambient temps in the room. But as a means of heating your warm end you want to go with a thermostat controlled UTH.

Also a thermostat on the heater as well.

I adopted a snake that spent 3 years next to a toaster-esque space heater and a hot red lamp over top (in a flexarium no doubt). Spent one year in quarantine, and eventually I had to put him down. The vet said that his immune system had become so compromised due to improper husbandry and heating that he wouldn't respond to meds, and was experiencing the equiv of an advanced RI.

He had perfect husbandry following for 12 months and still the damage was done.

Good luck with that,
bruce

[wilomn]

I've used heaters to heat my snake room for years. I replace them at least every 2 years. I have had several good ones, that I paid good money for, break down and overheat. Fortunately I'm in and out of the room several times a day as a rule and caught it each time.

As far as cost goes, getting a good one I look at like this. Is it worth it to save 50.00 bucks on a heater and then lose ALL my snakes because it shorts out or do I spend the coin and get one known for quality and hope it works as advertised?

Good luck and you may want to hook it to a thermostat so that if it does short out it will be shut off.

[wolfy-hound]

I had a oil-filled heater that heated my guest bathroom that was my first snake-room.
When it finally did get cold here this winter(all four days of it?) I turned one on in the currant snake room too. Just to give the rack heat a little boost.
It kept the snakes perfectly in my opnnion. The room stayed hot, and humid, and I loved it. I hate the cold. I bet I had the cleanest snake racks ever. Always was in there.

[Kagez28]

I hope you let your guests know about the snakes in the bathroom...

[Shelby]

I always have a space heater in the snake room.. I also use flexwatt for the warm sides in the tubs, but the space heater keeps the room at a constant 80 degrees.