Are hand warmers safe?

[Emily Hubbard]

On thursday, Zola and I are going to stay at my mom's house til the end of January. It's my winter break from college and I really want to go home for a few weeks because I hardly ever see my family any more, plus I have lots to do. But anyway, I bought a pack of those "HotHands" hand warmers for two reasons. 1) I planned on wrapping a couple of them in a washcloth and using them as a heat source for the hour and half car ride. Also, there can be some pretty violent winter storms out there, and if the power went out, which is not that unlikely, I wanted to have a stash of emergency heat. But I want to make sure these are safe to use for snakes. They really don't seem any different than the heat packs snakes are shipped with, but I just want to make sure....

I dont intend to ever let them come in direct contact with the snake, I would wrap them in cloth first.

The ingredients are listed as iron powder, water, salt, activated charcoal, and vermiculite. Simple chemistry to create heat, but could any of these things be potentially harmful, even if the snake never comes in direct contact with them?

Just making sure, shoot me your opinions.

My mom does have a gas stove, so I could always heat water for hot water bottles if things got really desperate. I lived in that house for the majority of my life, I know that winter outages happen, so I just want to be prepared and have a plan. One winter, we couldn't even get up the driveway because it was so flooded, and another, the county advised everyone to stay off the roads because of falling tree limbs. It's not even civilized, I tell you!

[rivunel]

the only problem i know of with the hand warmers is how fast they warm up i know that you would need more ventilation than using the heaters made for reptiles. they also get quite a bit hotter than you need them to but as long as they're wrapped up well and your snake has enough ventilation they should be fine

[rivunel]

i am confused though are you using them to keep you're whole tank warm or what? if you are just moving your snake from point a-b in a box it will need quite a bit of ventilation. edit: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...ES-Please-Read

[Maddumpling]

no they are not safe. I remember SNAKESRKEWL put up a thread saying that he received a dead snake because of hand warmers or something like that.

[Emily Hubbard]

Nono, I am moving my whole set up, but I am moving my girl in a pillow case just for the car trip, her viv and all that jazz is going in the trunk and she gets the front seat. I planned on activating a couple hand warmers, wrapping them in a washcloth and putting them at the bottom of a smallish tub I use for soaking,, putting the snake in a pillowcase and resting the pillowcase on the hand warmers, and putting the whole thing on my front seat.

After that, I planned on only using the hand warmers for an emergency power outage at home, should one arise.

How much ventilation is a lot? I have about 25 holes drilled in the top of my soaking tub, if I were to heat it with hand warmers (in an emergency) should I drill more?

[rivunel]

I imagine that should be fine and i mean if she's in the front with you that means you may be able to check on her on the way up? i linked to the thread snakesrkewl had about a snake he shipped with hand warmers that died. but i've never actually had any experience shipping reptiles or transporting them long distance i'm just answering from reading but even if you could just open the tub for a second or so while driving that should circulate air enough for ventilation

[Emily Hubbard]

Thank you for that thread. That was talking about a closed box shipping situation, I plan on just resting a pillowcase on them in an open tub with an extra cloth barrier. However, maybe not such a good idea for my emergency plan, because then the tub would need to be closed, unless I drilled about 50 holes in it, which I could easily do?

[Emily Hubbard]

I read more on that thread and am definitely rethinking. Where could I get some of the 40 hour heat packs used for shipping? I obviously don't plan on ever shipping, but they would be great to have for this kind of situation.

[rivunel]

it should be perfectly fine for a car ride that short (sort of forgot it was only an hour and a half drive)

[Emily Hubbard]

Yeah, it is a pretty short ride, hour and 45 if I lollygag and stop for something, hour 20 to hour 30 if I just book it straight through. But I did find some 40 hour reptile shipping packs on Amazon (gotta love Amazon), which would give me some peace of mind for an outage. I think I will get some and just have them shipped to my mom's house so they are there waiting for me in a few days.