Heater Questions

[Bristen]

I have a programmable digital thermostat to control heat in my snake room. I am currently using a small 1500W electric heater (which has a fan in it). The thermostat I have can be set to be a "on/off" type thing (which I have to use because of the fan in my little heater) or it can be set to be.. uh, I forget the term now, but it would turn the heater on just a bit when temp is just a tad off, or will blast the heater if temp is way off... does this method consume less power? I would suspect that if I'd decide to use a oil-filled heater (which a lot of people seem to think consumes less power), I would have to set it to on/off, correct?

I'm thinking of getting something more efficient, but I'm currently unclear as to what would be better. Because of the thermostat I have, I was thinking a simple heating element (baseboard type heater) would be best. I have a 15" fan running all the time to circulate air in the room.

Any opinions/suggestions welcome.

Thanks,
Bristen.

[arkuden]

hmmm sounds odd to me... are you saying that you are using a space heater to keep the room warm including the snakes or do the snakes have their own individual heat sources also like UTH or Heat lamps?

Using a space heater to keep your animals warm isnt a very good idea as it will drop your humidity to its knees and wont work very well that im aware of when it comes to snakes. Obviously if the room itself gets quite cold then i personally would use an oil based heater. The one i have also has a thermostat and it doesnt go on full blast when the temps drop a little bit. it usually warms up slowly to raise it up that one degree. If yours blasts on at full to try to rase a few degrees it will probably over pass the mark and waste a lot of uneeded power. To my knowledge they shuold heat up just enough to get a degree or two higher when needed. Hope this helps ya

[Bristen]

Originally posted by arkuden
hmmm sounds odd to me... are you saying that you are using a space heater to keep the room warm including the snakes or do the snakes have their own individual heat sources also like UTH or Heat lamps?

the space heater is to heat the room (as in ambient air temperature).. however, each snake tubs have a hot spot (under the belly) heated by heat tapes.

Originally posted by arkuden
Using a space heater to keep your animals warm isnt a very good idea as it will drop your humidity to its knees and wont work very well that im aware of when it comes to snakes. Obviously if the room itself gets quite cold then i personally would use an oil based heater. [...]

if I would have no space heater in the snake room I'd end up with a few thousand dollars worth of dead snakes... the hot spots alone are far from being enough.. my house has central heating and I had to cut off central heating from the snake room because the air coming out of the central air heating system is less hot than required for the snake room. For this reason, it is heated independantly from the rest of my house. With regards to humdity, no matter how you heat, you will have this problem. I noticed you're in the US, but I don't know enough about the US to know how far south you are located. But over here, it gets to about -30C (or less) outside in the winter. We HAVE to heat. And yes, we loose humidity every winter here. So what I did to fix the humidity problem, is I have a humidifier in the snake room. I also have a central humidifier for the house, but that's irrelevant because the central ventilation/heating system is cut off from the snake room.

Anyways, that's a lot of blabbling for saying so little lol!

Thanks for the reply,
Bristen.

[BoidKeeper]

I think Bristen in the long run the best thing for you to do is to switch to a baseboard electric heater with the thermostat you're using now. I think that getting it installed by a licensed electrician is a good idea to avoid any insurance issues.
Once everything is permanently installed and the thermostat is programmed with nighttime drops your life will be much easier.
One more step towards automation which will result in once less thing to think about.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Jeff_Favelle]

Oil-filled heater hooked up to an Aube programmable thermostat heats up my entire reptile room to 80F. I just use a Delonghie (sp?) on LOW setting and that's about 600W, and even then it only comes on every so often.

[Bristen]

well efficient is what I want.. my little fan heater has a low setting and it seems to be able to keep the room heated without any problems at that setting.. I'm assuming that the low setting is something like 750W or 600W.. however, it's not like those oil filled heaters that emit heat even after they are off...

so do you have a proportional thermostat on that oil-filled heater Jeff?

Thanks for the replies everyone!
Bristen

[arkuden]

my bad, i just didnt know exactly how you meant what you were asking. I see what you mean now. My oil heater works like a champ keeps my room at 82 constant.

and im from minesota (land of the cold air)
as far as US is concerned.

[Markus Jayne]

Bristen,

How are you doing?

I use an oil filled rad made by DeLongi (the same as Jeff). I have it attached to a Helix 1007 which is a proportional thermostat. It only provides enough power to the heater to establish the right output that is needed to obtain the correct temps. The principle of the oil in the rad is that the oil heats up and retains the heat more efficiently. It doesn't get hotter on its own and keep climbing after the temp has been met. It slowly starts to turn down. They are very efficient and cheap...around $65 - $100.

This is the set-up I use in my incubator and it works like a charm. I don't have any heaters in my snake room other than my heat tape. Works for me.

I also use a warm mist humidifier. I've tried many with wicks and they are useless.

Hope I helped.

Markus

[Jeff_Favelle]

Yep, what Mark said!

[Corey Woods]

Oil filled radiant heater all the way.

Corey

[Bristen]

Originally posted by Markus Jayne
How are you doing?

Pretty good Mark, thanks for asking! My pastel starting eating like champ and he really caught up!! He put something like 400g in just a few months! yay! I started cycling and will start introducing next week... Also, between Trevor and I, it appears like the big fellow will have about 9 females.. 2 or 3 of which we are not sure will produce anything this year, but we're hoping all the other ones will go.

Originally posted by Markus Jayne
I use an oil filled rad made by DeLongi (the same as Jeff). I have it attached to a Helix 1007 which is a proportional thermostat. It only provides enough power to the heater to establish the right output that is needed to obtain the correct temps. The principle of the oil in the rad is that the oil heats up and retains the heat more efficiently. It doesn't get hotter on its own and keep climbing after the temp has been met. It slowly starts to turn down. They are very efficient and cheap...around $65 - $100.

ok, so oil-filled rad is what it will be! You explained that quite well, thanks!

Originally posted by Markus Jayne
This is the set-up I use in my incubator and it works like a charm. I don't have any heaters in my snake room other than my heat tape. Works for me.

uh what?? no heat other than heat tape??? The only way I could understand that working for you is because of the large number of animals you probably keep... there's probably enough heat tape in there to heat to room.. in my case, the heat tape would be FAR from what's required to keep the room at a reasonable temp... the little heater I have currently goes on often enough... I know if I'd unplug the heater completely, the ambient air temperature would get too cold :-(

Originally posted by Markus Jayne
I also use a warm mist humidifier. I've tried many with wicks and they are useless.

my wife ended up buying the humdifier.. I think she just chose that one because it was cheaper lol! However, after she showed it to me, I thought it would be better.. since it's warm water, I think it would be less prone to bacteria growth and stuff.. the cool mist humidifiers appear to me as beaing higher maintenance.. but that's just the impression I get, it's not anything that I read about them or anything...

Originally posted by Markus Jayne
Hope I helped.
Markus

yes you did!! Thank you very much!

ps: to Corey and Jeff, thanks for backing Mark's reply

Later all,
Bristen.

[Bristen]

oh, one more thing since I got everybody's attention now

For my snake room, I use a regular house thermostat.. it is however a digital/programmable thermostat.. (I forget the brand name)... this is really nice because I can program night-time temp drops, etc.. however, for some reason, the actual thermostat control gets warm when the heater is used often (like in the winter time, the heater basically never goes on in the summer)... Why is the control getting warm? It is rated for up to 1500W heaters (which is what I am using). Because it is getting warmer, it seems to "think" it's 80F (it's max temp) when in fact it's only 79F or 78F.. Any ideas what's wrong?

I know I probably should get a Helix for the room heating... However, the reg house thermostat I have now should theorithically(sp?) do the trick... I want to order a helix to setup an incubator in the next couple of months, so if a Helix for the room is the only option I could order a second one, but I'm hoping I can do with the setup I have for now... the funds are getting low.. well, actually not getting low, but all gone :-(

Anywho, let me know what you guys think as your opinion is much appreciated.

Thanks!
Bristen.

[Bristen]

Hi everybody, just wanted to thank everybody for their replies.. I purchased an oil-filled radiator at Wal-Mart over the weekend (was like $60)... it's amazing how good it works!! I couldn't believe it.. my room now is the correct temperature.. I think I was having issues with the little heater I had because it was concentrating on heating the air with warm blasts of air..

Anyways, now I have a more efficient heating device, but when I set the thermostat to 80F, everything in the room is actually 80F when I zap it with the RayTek.. it used to be as much as 2F lower with the little heater...

Thanks a bunch everyone!
Bristen.

[smeagel]

where do you get these oil filled heaters, and about how much do they cost?

[Jeff_Favelle]

LOL Smeagel. The FIRST sentence of Bristen's last post answered both those questions.