Cage in basement: Heating Question

[Soundcity]

Hello everyone. I am new to the forum, but have been keeping Boas and other snakes for a number of years.
We are moving into a new house next month and my snake room is unfortunately going to have to be in the unfinished basement for now.
It is cold in the basement during the winter(60s) so I am debating on if I need to add heat for the cool side of the cage. One though it adding Radiant heat panels to my cages on the cool side and setting the temp to 80. Does that sound like a good plan?
I thought about an oil heater just to raise the basement temperate, but the basement has no walls and it is a large basement(1800 square feet).

Thanks in a advance for the help.

[lady_bug87]

Welcome to the community! My enclosures are all in my basement. I keep my hotspots in the mid 90s. I don't do anything special to the cool side. If I feel like the room is too cold I run a space heater.

[chairman]

I used to have my reptile room in my basement. Basements are actually pretty good for keeping animals because they tend to be easy to keep stable temperatures in. To keep the room temperature at a steady 70F I used an oil filled radiator style space heater controlled by a reptile thermostat capable of handling the electrical load.

I'd go ahead and put the heater in place to start with. Then I'd finish the corner of the basement that you want to keep reptiles in. Exactly what that will require depends on the current state of the basement.

[Soundcity]

Thanks y’all.

Chairman, what thermostat did you use with your space heater?

[Soundcity]

I ran a digital thermometer over night in the basement area and the temp dropped from 66 to 61 in the basement over night while the outside temps were in the high 30s.
Let me know if this plan works or if there are better ideas.
I can get an oil filled heater and set it to keep the ambient temp around 70. I can then use the radiant heat panel on the cool side of the cage to raise it to 80 on the cool side opposite of the belly heat.

[Soundcity]

The temp only dropped down to 64 over night. I have a company coming over tomorrow to give me a quote to put up a false wall to enclose the area. Hopefully this along with the heater will allow me to get the temperate more manageable.
Does this all sound like I am headed in the right direction?

[chairman]

Technically, I built my own thermostat using a standard baseboard heater thermostat.

But Inkbird makes a thermostat that controls up to 1200 watts (would handle a space heater set on low, medium, or high), Zilla makes a unit that controls up to 1000 watts (heater set on low or medium but not high), Exo Terra makes a unit that handles 600 watts (heater set on low), Vivarium Electronics makes a unit that can handle 700 watts (heater set on low), Zoo Med makes a unit that handles 600 watts (heater on low), etc.

I set my thermostat to keep my room at somewhere between 70 and 75. I used undertank heating, CHE's, basking bulbs, etc, to keep enclosure temps where they needed to be (depending on species and their needs).

It sounds like you're headed in the right direction with installing the walls. Assuming that you got your quote today, make sure it includes insulation (interior walls are not usually insulated).