Another horror story about heat lights....

[Scales Zoo]

Some of you will remember our cage fire that was very nearly a house fire, about 4 years ago. It was stupid, heat light in a wood cage - and it killed some savanna monitors, but not the house, Sarge the dog, or our other reptiles.

Well, the monitor cages I keep in the basement were starting to cool off since it got cold. So, I bought 150 watt spot lamps to replace the 100 watt lights I had been using. I put them into the heat light fixtures, above the cages, set over the cut mesh covered cutouts in top of the cages.

January 1, Sheila woke up at a friends house crying. She had just had a nightmare that the house burnt down, and the dogs and other pets perished. We have learned to trust our dreams, I won't try to provide any explanation for it, but we've had good reason to trust them in the past.

We rushed home, to find nothing amiss. The next morning, however, Sheila woke up at 5:00 am, and soon after, smelled something. I got up, smelled something too - but it didn't seem to be fire or heat. A quick check of the house and I went back under the covers where it was warm.

An hour later, the smell was worse Sheila noticed - and when we again checked the basement, we saw that one of the heat lights had moved off of it's screeen meshed hole, and was sitting partially on the top of the melamine cage. That part of cage had started to smolder. I unplugged everything, and hit it with water. It took a gallon of water to stop the sizzling from the smoldering melamine.

As worried as I am about heat lights, I had thought that set up to be safe. If it had been a day earlier while we were away, we would have surely lost the house, the reptiles we keep here, the dogs, all of our pictures, and my baseball size ball of goobers I've been saving for 15 years to enter it in Guiness some day.

Moral of the story - heat lights in a house are very dangerous, and you should always trust your dreams or nightmares. I know of friends heat pads causing as much or more potential damage as well.

I'll let you know if I figure out a good solution to heat lights in a house, but obviously I don't have it figured out yet. I'd say get good insurance, but realistically insurance would not cover a fire started by heat light in a house, and it really shouldn't, because it is an accident waiting to happen.

Go check your heat sources!

Ryan

[wyz]

Originally posted by Scales Zoo
and my baseball size ball of goobers I've been saving for 15 years to enter it in Guiness some day.

What are Goobers ? Got a pic ?

WYZ

[susan]

something like that happened to me, somehow my lamp got knocked off cage fell on carpet light down and the carpet was smoldering
scary

[Vengeance]

Things like this are very scary, espically since most insurance companies won't cover us because of the way the fire was started. Does anyone know any herp friendly insurance companies? I hate thinking that we could lose everything over my hobby. I replace my heat pads once a year but once I get heat tape and a rack system any ideas on how often heat tape should be replaced or would it need to be replaced at all?

I'm glad nothing bad happened Ryan.

[BoidKeeper]

Crazy stuff Ryan. Maybe you should switch over to radient heat panels instead.
Cheers,
Trevor

[K1LOS]

Perhaps a solution would be a wire cage surrounding the heatlamp itself. Have the lamp suspended within the cage, so there is 2" on each side. THat way, no matter what happens to the light, it can't get more than 2" from anything. Just a thought, but realistically i know im not going to do this.

Geoff

[Shad0w]

Wow scary...
I use heat panels on thermostats and florecent lighting just for this reason...

Glad to hear ya caught it in time and it did not turn into a disaster.

[paulsreef]

You really have to have a Murphy's Law train of thought. Think of all possible senararios. I had a heat lamp clamp that was made of hard plastic. It was holding my heat lamp for years; I went to relocate it one day and when I squeezed the clamp, it broke in my hand. The heat dried out the plastic and made it brittle. It probably wasn't really meant to hold a heat lamp. Even a lower wattage bulb x many years of operation would of ended with the same result. Paul.

[wiseman001]

I often worry about the same thing.. I have a Boa he's about 5.5 feet, and 2 BP... anyway.

I have had simular dreams...and now I turn the lights off at night and if im goin away for a day or two.. the lights are left off...my place stays warm enough during the winter months that the snakes don't get cold..

im the past I have had dreams my car got stolen, Now its nothing special its a old plymoth acclaim 92 not worth much.. but 3 days later May 24 weekend .. sure enough i work up sunday morning of the long weekend and it was gone.. i wish i would of known..well it was found a week later no damage THANK GOD!!.

[Greg West]

Ryan, I am glad you didn't have any worse results with the lights. In my opinion you should do away with the dome lamps and mount permanent light fixtures to the inside of the cage. I had the same problem a couple of months ago. I was adding lights to the bearded dragon cage to add more heat, and in my stupidity I draped the dome lamp on the inside of the cage with the cord hanging out, and then a watter bottle hanging off of the slack to make sure it didn't fall out. Well one day when watering in the morning I forgot to put the water bottle back. My wife came home to a basement full of smoke and a cage smoldering with bran. Luckily the 3 adults in the cage were hibernating and they weren't hurt. It could have been so much worse, and I was really lucky. You have to be 100Xs more careful with non permanent lighting.

[Rob McRobbie]

Close call Ryan.. What I have done in the past when working with heatlamps for my chameleons is drill 4 holes on the edges of the lamp shroud and then wire the shroud to the wire mesh that it is sitting on..

It's kinda a pain in the neck when you have to change out burnt bulbs but it is a lot safer aa the lamp can no longer be shifted around..


Rob

[Scales Zoo]

Rob, I had actually screwed them in place at one time, but the top cage is difficult to get to, and there has not been a screw in there for a couple of months. I think that little screw would have helped.

Greg, I do have many of the cages done with permanantly installed lighting. The access doors to these ones wouldn't let me change the lights, but maybe I need to make another access door to do so.

Lots of good ideas.

Fire bad!

Ryan

[Stockwell]

I think I've posted on this many times in the past and its always good to here other stories from the field.
People, incandescent heat bulbs in and over cages are just too dangerous and cause nearly all of herper related fires. Consider them candles without wicks, and they're probably actually more dangerous, because candles usually go out when they fall.
Use heat panels, and heat tape combined with fluorescent lights. Bulbs just put too much heat in too small an area.. You need heat which is more spread out to help reduce the chances of catastrophe.
Glad you escaped another close call Ryan.
And yes indeed.
Fire bad, high power bills bad, bulbs bad!!!

[Simon]

Wow Ryan

Glad that you made it back home and trusted your dreams. Cause if I made a dream like that I wouldn't have gone home like that.....guess now I would have to believe in my dreams if I ever have ANY dreams like that.....

I do agree, bulbs can be dangerous......
I too had a couple of times that the lights fell off and burnt an area of my carpet.....so after that I switched everything to heat tapes, which is better but still not 100% save.

Anyways glad that you escaped another close call~~

[HetForHuman]

I almost had my house burn down about 3 years ago because of a 100watt heat bulb on top of my boas cage.
I never had it fastened to the screen top, and never had any problems untill the one morning.

At about 8:30 in the morning i woke up to a terrible burning smell, and when i opened my eyes all i could see was grey smoke everywhere. My first thought was my room mate come home drunk and forgot something on the stove, but i was wrong. When i walked into the living room where my one and only snake was at that time, i seen my dome light sitting on the carpet smouldering away, i totally freaked out. I quickly unplugged it, and tossed it into the sink, then i seen a little flame on the carpet, so i quickly filled a ice cream pail full of water and started dumping it on the carpet.

When i knew it was out, i looked more closely and seen that the heat lamp had burned through the carpet, the underlay, and all the way down to the plywood on the very bottom.

And the thing was the light was prob on the carpet most of the night, but thank god i had it on a timer. The lamp would have turned on at 7:00 in the morning, good thing i woke up when i did.

I figure it must have been my cat that knocked it off but cant say for sure.
But what is really wierd is when we phoned the insurance company, they sent out an insurance adjuster guy to look and see what happened, and right when he come in the door, he seen my tank the light and the snake, and we still got covered for the insurance.. All i had to pay was a $500 deductable, and my whole living room was re-carpeted.

Lets just say it was soon after that i quit using lights alltogether. Heatpads and heat tape all the way now.