reptile room q's

[K1LOS]

hey everyone,

the overall temperature in my reptile room is getting too warm in this summer heat. I am getting up to 88 degrees during the day and thats too much. The problem is, my basking spots are still at the right temperatures, but there is no escape from the heat. So how do i cool down the rest of the room but not the basking spots?

oh, and i don't want to have a breeze on my chameleon, so that would rule out a window or fan, and i have no AC.

Geoff

[proud2bcanadian]

I'm not too sure if this will work or not...

If you can get a project board (one that opens from the centre - out) and put that around three sides of the chameleons cage. Then, you can set up a fan.

Just an idea... but I HTH

Good luck,

[mykee]

I had this exact problem not a month ago when I moved into my new house and my reptile/rodent room started to heat up out of control. Simple. Open a window, and close the blinds and/or drapes. Heat rises, and if you open your window even an inch or two, you'll notice that the heat will have a place to escape to and new, fresh air will have a chance to enter the room and circulate. Keeping the blinds closed will not allow the sun into the room, heating the room up even more than it already is, with no escape route. Good luck.

[Kyle Barker]

we had to install a metal shade in front of our living room window. for some bizarre reason we have been getting temps up to 48 c this week. its not cool at all! this shade alone lowered the inside temp roughly 18 degrees and with the blinds and shades closed its down to about 23 inside. i temped the metal blinds, 68 :O im not looking forward to july/august. thank god my animals are in the nice cool garage.

[kidchameleon]

my room also got waaaay too hot for my reptiles, and me. so i moved them into the basement. its a lot cooler down there, and also more humid, which is good for my chameleons

[Invictus]

If it's chams, I can understand the worry. If it's snakes, come on... do you think it never gets to 88 degrees in the wild? What do they do then, ask passersby to turn on a fan for them? Hell no. They just enjoy it. My herp room/computer room is routinely hitting 86 degrees right now. The herps are fine. They have evolved to cope with such heat.

[marisa]

I do much what Invictus does.

When my herp room goes past 85, I turn off all the heat sources. In fact, during the hot summer months, my colubrids don't get any heat source and do quite fine with the hot temps during the day.

I leave my balls heat sources on until it hits 90 in the room. Then they also sit at 90 until the cool down at evening night comes. It's worked fine so far.

Marisa

[leoncurrie]

Originally posted by Invictus
If it's snakes, come on... do you think it never gets to 88 degrees in the wild? What do they do then, ask passersby to turn on a fan for them? Hell no. They just enjoy it.

I disagree. ETB cannot handle high temps. They don't enjoy it.

[K1LOS]

I started this thread in the first hot week of summer, or it was for us anyways. Since then the temperatures have stabilized at a comfortable 78-83 in the room, and i have been opening the window a crack on weather permitting days (not windy or rainy) to cool it down if necessary. I have no blinds in the room yet (i just moved here about a month ago), but i will try that when it becomes necessary again. Thanks for the input!

Geoff

[BoidKeeper]

My room heats up to and I open the window and close the blinds. I also open the door and let the heat flow out by way of a draft with the door and window open.
IMO the ideal herp room is in a basement where it is cool. That way it never gets hotter then the temp on the thermostate you set and you can keep every one where they need to be for temp cycling. Also if your room temp is constent and controled you don't need to buy expensive thermostats like helix because if the ambiant never changes you basking spots never change. If you set you hot spot to 90 and the room temp is 80 what happens to that hot spot of 90 when the room temp climbs to 88?
Man I can't wait for a basement herp room.
Cheers,
Trevor

[marisa]

"If you set you hot spot to 90 and the room temp is 80 what happens to that hot spot of 90 when the room temp climbs to 88?"

In my herp room the hot spots are controlled by thermastats with probes. If the room heats up causing the hot spot to heat up, the thermastat turns off the heat. Some days, my heating elements are turned on by the thermastat maybe once or twice for a half hour.

Marisa

[Cruciform]

The basement in the house we just bought is freakin' cold. I had thought about putting a herp room down there at first, but if anything heat generating were to fail I'd probably have some seriously ill BPs on my hands. I'd estimate it's low to mid 50s in there. I'll have to throw a thermostat in the finished room for a test when I get home.

[Jeff_Favelle]

If it's snakes, come on... do you think it never gets to 88 degrees in the wild? What do they do then, ask passersby to turn on a fan for them? Hell no. They just enjoy it.

Time to start actually observing wild snakes my man. Nobody turns on a fan, I agree, but when temperatures exceed what a snake is trying to be at, they usually go underground. Some go in water, but mostly its underground, where the temperature is up to 10+ degrees Celsius cooler.

That's the funniest statement I ever heard. NO reptile likes to be 88F all the time. They use different temperature for different purposes. If they don't want to be 88F, and you won't know when or for how long this is, they shouldn't have to be. Its our job as keepers to give them at least that much. No need to be cruel to our pets because of laziness.

[Lisa]

To make our herp room cooler we blocked most sunlight from entering the room (see herproom show case photos). also we have an ac unit in the room (the herps get ac but not us).