I'm just curious what temps you all use for your home thermostats, and where you live. I feel like I've seen a lot of mentions on the forums of keeping the home thermostat set to 70°, which seems really high to me. I live in the Boston area, and I don't think I know anyone who keeps it that high all the time. Maybe people with programmable t-stats set it almost that high for hours when they're home, but even then it seems like a lot.

So I'm wondering what you all do in terms of balancing your home heating costs against the needs of your animals. A lot of folks mention space heaters. Well-insulated enclosures with lots of heaters? Does your heating system have multiple zones? Or do you just insulate your enclosures well and cover them in heat sources?

I basically use that latter strategy; my snake is in a 20-gal tank with foam over three sides and a gigantic RHP (on a thermostat) mounted on a modded-out top. It sounds a bit silly, but heating the tank still consumes under 100 watts whereas heating the room would require either a space heater at over 1000 watts, or turning up the thermostat for the whole house (we don't have different zones) by an additional 15 degrees or more. The cost of a large-ish RHP pales in comparison to the cost of running a space heater for months at a time, or heating up an entire house when you really only need to heat a couple of cubic feet of it.

I do have a space heater in my office/practice room, and I use when I'm working in that room; still more efficient than heating the whole house. When I handle the snake, I turn on the heater and bring him in there.