Racks in Colder Climates

[Purkinje]

"adding extra heattape to the enclosure. An added row of 3 or 4 inch heat tape tended to help temps quite a bit."

JD, Does adding another strip of Flexwatt to then require an additional thermostat?
-J

[casperca]

I have had luck with the insulation board in bringing up temps on the bottom drawers of my racks. We like to keep our heat low in the winter as well and just ended up making a reptile room which we heat to 78-80 in the winter with a space heater. The balls, beardie and fat tails are all on inside walls to be sure they get the warmest temps while the cresties are all on an outside wall. Good luck! Its one of the challenges of living in WI for sure!

[nixer]

i have rbi racks and i dont have a problem in the winter im in nw indiana, but what i had to do was place my air holes on the sides of the tub only no holes in the front at all. i did 1 hole every inch. and that was just because of the air temps mixing in the front tended to create that steamy look to the front. now instead the air mixes inside the rack where its somewhat heated before it goes into the tub. btw im also in a basement so it stays fairly cooler year round.

[Purkinje]

Nixer,
With fewer holes though do you have high humidity issues?
-J

[mooingtricycle]

If you think youre going to have issues. Just get more flexwatt.

Cheap, and simple to attach. Remember to use a Thermostat. ( of course)

[mooingtricycle]

JD, Does adding another strip of Flexwatt to then require an additional thermostat?
-J

If your Current Tstat cannot handle the extra wattage of the flex. then Yes. It will.

If it can handle the extra wattage, then nope. Attach, plug in, and go. Monitor the temps for the first 48 hours.

[joyful girl]

I'm a fellow Wisconsinite so I know where you're coming from. Prior to buying my current house we lived in a apartment where the snakes were all in the living room so we had some heating issues. I didn't want to heat the entire apartment so we used a oil filled radiator heater near the snake racks to boost the temps.

Now that I have a snake room I still use a radiator heater to keep a constant room temp of 80 degrees and work from there. It's nice not having to go from 0 degrees to 40 the next day. I always know how warm my room is going to be without the whole house having to be kept warm.

[bigballs]

with temps in the 60s you will not be able to get proper temperatures without a space heater. the flexwatt may create a surface basking area of 90 but the ambient temp in rest of the tub will be whatever the room temperature is. i think you'll need to get a space heater and up your ambient room temperature to create proper ambient rack temps for your bps.

if you wanted to add flexwatt to the cool side you would need either a seperate thermostat or a thermostat that can control two different temperatures from different heating elements. herpstat makes one but im not sure what the model is called. the thermostat would control the flexwatt on your warm side at 90 and also the flexwatt on your cool side at 80.

the problem may be that flexwatt creates surface temperatures and im not sure by how much it would raise the ambient temps. usually it may raise ambient temps by a few degrees but that being the case then the snake would be sitting on 80 degree flexwatt on the cool side but would always be surrounded by and breathing in 68-70 degree ambient temperature air.

also the 2 strips of flexwatt would need to run the full length of the tub(halfway each) or else there would be no heat provided in the middle of the tub. if you were to use the herpstat that can control both the hot side and cool side flexwatt and a thermostat failure was to occur then the snake would have no where to escape the heat and could be cooked.

maybe people successfully heat their racks in this way and it would be great to hear from them but i would suggest getting a space heater and raising the ambient temps and using flexwatt only to create a warm side.

[hogboy]

I use an oil filled radiator, but also have a small desk fan directed at the rad, makes a huge difference to the overall room temp, really blows the warm air around the room.
It can get pretty chilly over here in the UK

[Purkinje]

From Toronto I guess you'd have experience w/ cold whether and herps
In any case, your comment about the ambient air is in conflict w/ Nixer's post above:

I have rbi racks and i dont have a problem in the winter im in nw indiana, but what i had to do was place my air holes on the sides of the tub only no holes in the front at all. I did 1 hole every inch. And that was just because of the air temps mixing in the front tended to create that steamy look to the front. now instead the air mixes inside the rack where its somewhat heated before it goes into the tub.

Any thoughts about that? Also, Animal plastics has this radiant heat configuration where they have heat tape on either side of the rack going vertically. Apprently, that warms the ambient air.

-J