Reptile Room Build

[OhhWatALoser]

Well I did a progression thread for my rodent room and got some good tips in it, so I figure I'd do the same for my reptile room. I bought this house last year and the ground floor had 2 small bedrooms next to each other that really didn't make good bedrooms with the flow of the rest of the house imo. So one of them became the reptile room and the other was just storage. Well I think I would be much happier if both of them were the reptile room, so I am making that happen.

So far I have done a few things to prep for this project. I moved the wall of the utility room to actually get some room in that room, which became the doorway to the future reptile room. Figure it could be hidden in the utility room and not attract attention elsewhere for any guests I might have over. Got a new water heater and moved its location, so while I was running pex I ran some for the future reptile room. Have valves for a sink and a hose bib connected to a mixing valve, which will allow me to have any temp water in a hose. We got new windows for the entire house, I had the ones in the future reptile room be privacy glass. When i was doing other work I had a dumpster here, so I took out the closets in the bedrooms just because I had a easy place to throw them away.

Now that my pressing projects are done, time to start actually making this happen. Step 1 move out the reptiles. I give you my front room now:


After moving out all the stored boxes and reptile supply, this is what I am working with, the old reptile room:


you can see through the old closet door:


storage room, standing where the closet used to be, can see the doorway, sink location, and hose:


other side of storage room:


Approximately 15 minutes after taking those pictures:


So my master plan is to set this room up for ambient only heating, but also have the ability to switch to heat tape if I deem it necessary. So that means a ton of insulation and electrical plugs all around. Currently the exterior walls don't even have insulation (I know seriously?) so I will insulate the exterior and interior walls. I think I want to build false walls all around the room to hold another layer of insulation. Then the ceiling already has some insulation, but I want to either frame out another ceiling to hold more insulation or just put foam board up. There is no insulation under the floor currently, which I will be able to do from the crawlspace. I wish i would've thought of this when I built the utility room wall, could've easily used wider boards then, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Heating will be done by an oil filled of some sort with a fan blowing near it to heat the room. I also fear some of the hot summer days overheating the room, so I might have a fan to suck in air either from the main house or the crawlspace to cool it down in emergency. I still have no idea what I want to do for flooring. I also need to see if I have a way to add a floor drain, which I think would be really nice to have. so yea that's about where I am at now, I'll try to post pictures as it happens.